


Smoke and Mirrors

by nanyinai



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-06 16:43:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 57,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12821718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanyinai/pseuds/nanyinai
Summary: Rane Roth is a young Auror staying at headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix and a chronic insomniac.  Sirius Black suffers a similar fate.  When they meet one another in the wee hours of the morning, a series of events is cast into motion that neither of them could have predicted.





	1. A Cigarette in the Dark

Rane opened her eyes.

It was dark in twelve Grimmauld Place . . . Well after midnight. There was a brisk, chilling wind sweeping through the little bedroom she shared with Ginny and Hermione. Through the open window, she could see stars glinting through the orange lamplight from the street below, and the full moon, visible as a pregnant orb in the rosy-blue sky the night before, was nowhere to be found. The room was chilly, and as she sat up, she rubbed her bare arms briskly against the cold. She swung her legs off the side of the bed, and getting up crossed to the window and shut it with a snick. As the wind died in the little room, she turned.  
Hermione and Ginny were both bundled up into cocoons, sleeping soundly. Hermione was buried up to the crown of her bushy head. They hadn’t woken as she had, and Rane wondered vaguely what had roused her so abruptly.

She stood at the side of her bed a moment, a tall lean girl with long dark hair, and considered lying back down. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned and walked quietly towards the door, taking care not to step on the squeaky bits of floorboard she knew so well. Rane was painfully aware that now that she was up, it could be hours before she slept again . . . Such was her strange mind. To fight it was pointless.

She opened the door, winced at its low rasping creak, and glanced back at Ginny and Hermione, who were both still lying perfectly still, dead to the world. She closed the door gently behind her, and once it had snicked shut, she turned to the empty corridor. Somewhere off to her right, she could hear someone - probably Ron - snoring noisily. Not even Crookshanks, who spent most nights racing up and down the hardwood staircases and breaking china, was anywhere to be found.

She pulled her wand from her bed shorts, pointed it into the thick darkness, and murmured, _“Lumos!”_

The hallway lit up with the silvery white glow of her wand, throwing everything into exaggerated contrast. She made her way down the corridor, and then descended the shadowy stairs,.

The living room below was as dark as the room above. Rane stood in the foyer a moment, staring around, nonplussed. The floor was abandoned. She noticed, however, on her bare legs, a breeze, and her light eyes turned to the left of the foyer, where a stairway from another wing ended. There, she saw one of the doors leading to the patio unlocked and hanging cracked.

_“Nox!”_

She waved her wand, extinguishing the light that shone in the darkness, and moved forward with the silent amnesty that came with her Elven blood. Walking towards the door, which was mostly glass, emblazoned with the Black family crest, she peered outside.

There was a form there, sat on the deck. He was resting on one of the four iron chairs, looking out into the black evening forest that stretched beyond the back of the house. A candle burned flickeringly on the railing, casting a reddish glow on the edge of the profile. As she watched, the figure lifted a lean arm, took a drag off of what seemed to be a cigarette, and then let the arm fall. A moment later a thin stream of smoke, alight with the candle’s glow, puffed out into the evening clear.

Rane stood where she was a moment, then she slid aside the door and stepped outside. It creaked as it opened, and as she stepped out, her footsteps quietly padding on the wooden deck, the figure shifted.

“Sirius?” said Rane quietly. 

Sirius turned, the light igniting his profile shifting slightly, and made as if to hide the cigarette in his hand. Rane could see the gleaming sparkle of his eyes fixing on her in his surprise.

“Who‘s that - Rane?” he said. “I wasn’t . . . I was just sitting -” 

“It’s okay,” said Rane, sliding the door shut behind her and smirking at him. “I don’t care. For fuck’s sake, stop hiding it, it’s just a smoke.”

Sirius snorted and brought the cigarette out from behind his back.

“If Remus or Molly sees this I’ll never hear the end of it,“ he said glumly. He glanced at her, took a long draw on it, then offered it to her.

“Give me one of my own and I‘ll keep your filthy secrets, you scoundrel, you,” Rane said, grinning and drawing one of the iron chairs up beside him. Sirius stared at her for a moment, then chuckled, pulled a pack from his pocket and shaking one out lit it with his wand and handed it to her.

“Is that why you’re out here? Secret cigarette time?”

Sirius shook his head, his chin propped on his fist. “Couldn’t sleep.” He examined the cigarette in his hand a moment, then added, “Just as well, though - I haven’t gotten a moment alone to sneak one in ages.”

They sat in silence for a moment, smoking, listening to the scree of crickets.

“Why are you awake at this hour?” Sirius asked. His voice was low and husky as he stared off into the dark wood beyond the Black property.

“I can’t sleep either,” Rane replied. She hesitated, the cigarette held aloft between her fingers. “I can’t sleep very often, period. I wake up a lot like this, so I come out here. Most of the time none of you guys are awake,” she added, glancing sidelong at him.

Sirius glanced at her as well, his smoke held aloft in his hand, and there was a moment, suspended in the dark, damp night air, where they simply regarded each other. Rane stared into Sirius’s face - his unshaven chin, his smooth cheeks, his sparking grayish brown eyes glittering under the starlight, the hairs in his brows glistening in the cold air.

“What woke you up?” said Sirius. She could see the quick motions of his eyes marking the details of her face in the gloom, the cigarette still gripped between his fingers.

“I dunno,” said Rane. She hadn’t broken eye contact with him, and suddenly a strange emotion began to fill her from the bottom up. It was a sense that Sirius was… well, handsome. Very handsome. The way the light rode on the ridge of his nose, the crown of his forehead, the irises of his eyes… the flicker of his mouth, parted slightly, showing his white teeth and the dampness of his tongue . . . She wondered suddenly, quite unconsciously, what that tongue would feel like moving along the corner of her mouth, into her inner lip, caressing her gum line . . .

“What?”

Rane blinked, suddenly aware that she’d been staring at Sirius, and averted her eyes at once, uncomfortable. Sirius let his gaze linger a moment longer, then turned his eyes upon the dark wood and took a draft from his smoke.

“Nothing.” said Rane quietly. She smoked, then added, “Sorry.”

Sirius, his voice betraying only the vaguest interest, said, “For what?”

Rane thought later that the lateness, the midnight hour, the lack of sleep and its accompanying disregard for sagacity, were to blame for what followed. But in the end it came to her own want when she spoke, her voice sounding falsely genial.

“Bit weird, isn‘t it, sitting out here at night gawking at you.”

There was a pause, the space of four heartbeats, when their eyes met again. They sat in chairs alongside one another, the wind breathing over them unconcerned.

“Why should you be sorry for that?” Sirius asked softly, never breaking his eye contact.

Thoughts she had never had - strange, half-formed thoughts rife with a shapeless emotion - filled her mind. She marked the breeze that ruffled his dark hair, the stoic furrow of his brow, the creasing line along one side of his mouth that deepened when he smiled.

“It’s just . . .” Rane scoffed, feeling graceless. “I dunno, fuck.”

Sirius scoffed too, smiling. “You dunno, eh?”

“I don‘t.”

He turned, took a drag from his smoke, the smile still touching his lips. She smoked too, feeling heat rising to her face. Her heart was beating a little more quickly than she thought warranted seated here on the porch.

“Do you ever get lonely here?” Rane asked at length.

Sirius rolled his head back on his shoulders, the starlight glinting off his grin. “Absolutely,” he said grimly. “Every day. It’s better with you lot here for a spell, but pretty soon it’ll just be me and Kreacher.”

He glanced over at her. She sat looking out across the dark wood, her cigarette smoking idly. It was almost cashed.

“You’re seeing someone, eh?” he said.

Rane looked at him, surprised. “No. Why?”

Sirius snorted. “You’re bloody gorgeous, that’s why.”

Rane felt her face flush. She smiled. “Well shit. Thanks, Sirius.” She sighed. “Nope. No one wants the half-breed. Elindir wants to marry me off to some Elf from Forodaithas, according to Dad. I told him they were welcome to try.”

Sirius chuckled. “I’d like to see that.”

“The Elves are awful,” Rane said defensively, grinning at his amusement. “Boring! So goddamn _boring!_ All the care about is . . . is making swords and wandering around in the woods. And Iluvatar. Stupid ass Iluvatar. They _looooove_ Iluvatar so hard. It’s like sitting in a revival church in Tennessee, I swear to god.”

Sirius was laughing openly.

“I’m going to be single my whole life,” she said, and sighed. “Fuck it.”

“Well that’s two of us,” said Sirius grumpily, smoking. “Blimey, used to be I couldn’t keep them off of me. Now here I am, thin as a rake and coming up on forty, and it’s been years.” He blew his long hair out of his face irritably. “Dunno how long I can keep this up.”

“Years?” Rane said, glancing at him and smiling. “Did you say years?”

“Years.”

“Good god,” said Rane, grinning at him mischievously. “I dunno how you manage to stay sane. Years… sheesh.”

“Oh, I suppose you’re going to rub it in my face, are you?” Sirius said, grinning at her, his eyebrows high. “Pretty little Rane the half-Elf strutting about breaking hearts, are you then? Got to beat them off with a baseball bat?”

“You’re pretty familiar with beating things off, I bet,” Rane muttered, and a moment later Sirius was swiping at her playfully as she laughed.

They lapsed into silence. Rane stared across the brief lawn at the dark, foreboding trees. An owl hooted somewhere nearby - Hedwig, perhaps, hunting for mice in the starlight.

“To tell you the truth,” said Rane, “it’s been a while for me too.”

“Has it?” Sirius said, glancing at her curiously. “Lovely thing like you? Why is that?”

Rane shrugged and took a long drag on the cigarette before flicking the butt into the grass. “I guess I’ve just been busy. I haven’t so much as kissed anyone in months.”

“Want to kiss me?” said Sirius.

Rane looked at him, surprised, the beginning of a smile on her mouth. “What?”

“Kiss me,” Sirius repeated, turning to face her. “Go on.”

Rane stared at him, mystified. “You want me to kiss you.”

Sirius grinned at her. “Why not? Have you got something better to do?”

Rane laughed, looking at him. “You’re having a go at me.”

“I’m not,” said Sirius. “Truth be told I wouldn’t mind it myself. In fact I’d . . . well . . .” He trailed off, for the first time seeming a little reticent. “I’d like it very much.”  
Rane studied his face, searching for some sign of trickery, and found none.

“You want to kiss me?” she asked again.

Sirius took a breath and let it out. “Do I stutter?”

Rane could not have anticipated this in a hundred years. She looked into his eyes.

“I . . . okay, sure.”

Sirius shifted towards her, the chair scraping across the pavement, and leaned forward. Rane remained where she was, as motionless as a rabbit in headlights, staring at him, her hair over one shoulder, her hands clasped in her lap. He placed one hand on the arm of her chair, and the other on her cheek; his palm was warm, his skin soft, his touch very gentle.  
He paused before her, inches from her face, the fragrant smell of him washing over her, and looked into her eyes. Rane could hear his gentle breathing and the creak of the chair beneath his hand. When he spoke, his voice was very close and very kind.

“Sure?” he asked.

Rane’s heart was beating rapidly in her chest. She nodded minutely, and Sirius held her gaze a moment longer, then leaned forward and brushed his lips on hers. Rane could feel the roughness of his chin and the softness of his mouth; he drew back, as if waiting for a response, then leaned in, shifting, the chair moving beneath his weight, and pressed his mouth against hers more firmly. The taste of him was new and lovely; he tugged at her lower lip with infinite tenderness, kissed the corner of her mouth, and then moved back, his hand coming away from her face, and sat back down. Rane remained where she was for a moment and they stared at one another in the gloom.

“Taste like cigarettes, do I?” Sirius asked her slightly breathlessly.

Rane shook her head. “No, you taste good . . . I mean . . .”

Suddenly, she was acutely aware of what had just transpired between them, and her face reddened.

“That was lovely,” she said awkwardly, and laughed. “Really lovely.”

Sirius grinned. “It was . . . It was. Whew!” he added, patting his chest exaggeratedly. “Let me see your hand.”  
Rane offered it, and Sirius took her hand and pressed it against his chest. Rane could feel Sirius’s heart thumping quickly against her palm, its beat strong and fast. She stared into his eyes, which had never left hers.

“Feel that?”

“Wow,” said Rane. His chest was warm and firm against the cold, the sensation of his heartbeat somehow vital.

“You’ve got my heart doing double-time,” Sirius said, grinning at her.

“Mine too,” Rane said truthfully; her own heart was still pounding.

They sat in silence for a moment. Sirius was smiling, one hand stroking his rough chin, staring out across the dark. Rane looked at him curiously.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked, grinning.

“I was just wondering what Remus would’ve made of that if he’d happened to come strolling out,” Sirius told her, laughing. “Blimey, but he would’ve been bowled over.”

“He would have kicked the hell out of us both,” said Rane, chuckling. “Molly too.”

“Molly!” Sirius exclaimed, and threw his head back, laughing. “Oh boy, I forgot all about Molly! She wouldn’t have been able to keep her head on straight! Both of us out here smoking cigarettes and snogging in the wee hours of the morning . . .”

“It wasn‘t snogging, it was nice!” said Rane defensively, looking over at him. “Do you wish you hadn’t -?”

“Do I wish I hadn’t?” Sirius said incredulously, looking at her. “’Course I don’t!”

Their eyes met for a moment, Sirius sitting crookedly in his chair, the wind touching his long hair, Rane leaning against the arm of her own, her eyelashes sooty and outlined in the gloom. Suddenly Sirius leaned forward and placed his hands on each side of her face, his cigarette tumbling to the ground in a spray of sparks, and pressed his mouth into hers. The feeling of his lips, the coarseness of his chin, the hot wet sensation of his tongue, loosened her in every joint. She grasped the tendrils of his hair, loving their loose silkiness, loving the damp heat of his face beneath her palm. She could feel her heart pounding, loving that too. His mouth was the world.

Then he had drawn back, bent over her, and hung his head at her side, breathing hard, his hair obscuring his face.

“I‘m sorry,” he moaned, his voice close to her ear, and her flesh broke out in goose bumps. “I’m sorry . . . _God_ dammit . . .”

Rane was breathing hard. Her heart was hammering. Sirius knelt before her, took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his hair and looked up at her. His eyes were bright and there was a thin sheen of moisture on his hairline, glistening in the low light. Rane stared down into his eyes, gripping the arms of the chair tightly, her thin chest heaving.

Sirius swallowed hard. “God. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have . . . Shouldn’t have done that, it’s just . . .” He was panting. “It’s just, you’re . . .”

“A hideous fuckin chode?” Rane said, and they both let out a breathless laugh.

“You’re the most beautiful chode I ever saw,” Sirius said gravely. He swallowed again, took a deep breath and let it out. “Most beautiful thing I ever . . . Sitting there just . . . Just looking beautiful. I couldn’t . . .”

He shook his head, looking at her frankly.

Rane leaned down, took his face in her hands and gently kissed his mouth, liking the way his eyes had fallen shut at her touch as if in bliss, liking the way he leaned into her, liking the roughness of his skin and the scent of him, the taste of him. She drew back, looking into his face held between her hands, and his eyes slowly opened, his lips parted, looking up into hers.

“Is this okay?” she whispered to him.

Sirius shook his head, moving her hands with it. “I dunno,” he said in a low voice. “What is ‘this’ anyway?”

“I dunno,” said Rane.

They looked at each other in silence for a moment.

Rane swallowed, struggling with her next few words, and at last spoke haltingly, watching Sirius’s face.

“Do you . . . D’you want to go inside?”

Sirius regarded her in silence without replying for a moment. Rane was about to repeat herself when he spoke.

“Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”

Rane said nothing, only gazed at him.

“Together?”

“Yes,” said Rane quietly. “If . . . If you want to.”

Sirius stood up and offered his hand to her. She took it, rose, and stood looking up at him, the wind touching the tendrils of hair across her face. Sirius turned toward the house, still grasping her hand lightly, and she followed him through the door, which slid shut with a quiet snick behind them.

The house was silent but for the clock ticking in the foyer. Sirius strode toward the stairway and Rane followed him. They ascended past the first floor and when they reached the second, he turned, took her hand again, and led her down the hallway. The door to his room was slightly ajar, and upon seeing it, Rane was seized with a sudden, potent wave of desire. _In there, through that door_ , her mind gabbled in amazement, _in there is where we’re going to be . . . Sirius . . . Sirius and me . . . Alone in there_ . . .

Sirius pushed open the door, revealing his bedroom; it was small, unadorned except for his bed, a four-poster, which lay in silent waiting. Sirius waved his wand and the candles at the sides of the bed popped alight, casting the room into flickering resolution. Behind her she heard the door shut with a creaky snap. She turned, and Sirius stood there, his back to the door, motionless, staring at her, his handsome face lit only by firelight.

“Are you sure?” she asked him, unmoving.

Sirius shook his head, striding towards her. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

He pressed his mouth against hers hard, and this time she felt his tongue flit out and caress her lips just as she had imagined, and that did her in completely. She threw her arms around his neck, pressing his face into her, loving the way he tasted, needing him, and as they stumbled back towards the bed Sirius ran his fingers through her hair, kissing her neck, biting her ear, and his free hand ran down the small of her back, running up beneath her tank top and stroking the smooth skin there. She tugged at his shirt restlessly, and in one smooth motion he pulled it over his head and cast it aside, forgotten. Rane slipped her own off, and as they pressed into each other, the feeling of his bare skin on her breasts was overwhelming, alighting her. One of his hands reached up, caressed her left nipple, squeezed, and a moan escaped his lips as he kissed her. His hands found the rim of her shorts, yanked them unceremoniously off, and then one of his hands had found the slick, sweet cleft between her legs, and he ran his finger over her gently, maddeningly.

“God, I want you,” Sirius moaned into her mouth.

She broke away from him, sat on the bed and scooted backwards, and in the instant before he joined her there he stood at the end of the bed, looking at her longingly, his thin chest heaving, a lopsided smile touching his mouth, wearing only shorts - shorts which had picked up a distinct prominence. Rane stared at him admiringly, thinking again of how incredibly handsome he was - how incredibly sexy - and the need to have him overtook her again, making her gasp, loosening the muscles in her thighs.

“My god, you’re beautiful,” he said, breathing heavily.

“Take those off, will you?” she said huskily, lifting her chin at his boxers.

Sirius complied at once, and at last, not half an hour after finding him sitting outside without the merest hint of what was to come, she was looking at him standing fully naked before her. Her eyes traced the curve of his neck, the roundness of his shoulder, the thin line of black hair that began above his navel and descended amorously down, thickening above the perfect divot of his hipbone and ending at last at the shaft of his cock, which was long, full, and erect, trembling gently with his racing heartbeat. There he stood, breathing heavily, looking into her eyes, ready.

She sighed lustily. “Oh, my god, Sirius. Come here.”

Sirius climbed onto the bed and then he was on top of her, pressing her down, and she lay beneath him, kissing him, feeling his body hot and firm against hers. She could feel his heart pounding wildly against her chest. His mouth was hot on hers, the feverish glow of his bare chest against hers unbearably warm in the flickering candlelight. And then she could feel the hot, throbbing hardness of him pressing against her down below and she let out a moan involuntarily. Sirius responded to it at once, renewed in his urgency.

“Please,” she moaned, and then, his breath hot and rough in her ear, she felt him pause, felt him reach down, and then his hand was clutching her, and when three fingers slid into her she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. The need for him was so urgent, so imperative.

“I’ve made you wet,” he growled into her ear, doglike, and she moaned against his shoulder, her fingernails digging into his back helplessly.

_“Please_ . . .”

“Are you ready?”

“Please! Please, Sirius, God, _please_ -!”

And _then_ words failed her, because he had guided his cock into her and presently he thrust hard, and such a wave of blissful respite rode over her that she bit her lip against a scream. The sensation of him inside her - of the thickness of him, the warm firmness - was beyond coherent thought. She realized with dizzy alarm that she was going to climax soon.  
She stared up into his face, which was transported with bliss, his mouth slightly open, his eyes on hers, his brow furrowed in ecstasy, and as he drove into her again and again, his eyes didn’t leave hers. A glisten of moisture sparkled on his forehead. He reached up, touched her lip with his thumb, stroked her cheek.

“Rane,” he whispered reverently. “Oh, Rane. Oh . . . _Rane_ . . .”

She clutched at his shoulders and felt Sirius tense, his moans becoming louder, his breath harsher, oblivious to the noise they were making, and just before she reached her own pinnacle, she sensed he was going to reach his too. His motions slowed suddenly, his muscles tightened, and as Rane arched her back, biting her lip hard enough, to draw blood, he locked eyes with her, his hand between her shoulders, holding her close. And then, simultaneously, all conscious thought was wiped from their minds with the perfect soprano of ecstasy that engulfed them. Rane felt him inside her, deep, shuddering, felt the hotness of him as he filled her up, stared into his eyes as they stilled, swallowed up by their orgasms, motionless save for the frantic hammering of their hearts.

Then it was fading, and Sirius loosened and relaxed on her, his head lying on her shoulder, his long hair spread over her throat, breathing hard, the frenetic thumping of his heart conspicuous against Rane’s chest. He pulled himself out of her, sat up on an elbow at her side, and looked down into her face, his own flushed, tendrils of hair plastered to his sweaty neck.

“Blimey,” he gasped softly, and smiling lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her gently. He lay down beside her on his side, his head propped up on a pillow, and gazed at where she lay on her back, her hands laced on her chest, breathing hard, looking at him.

“You’re amazing,” she said breathlessly. “Just amazing.”

“Me?” said Sirius, smiling. “What about you, then? My god, you gorgeous creature . . . I dunno how I‘ll ever convince myself to get out of this bed.”

Rane waved a hand at him playfully. “Shucks.”

“How the hell did that just happen?” Sirius remarked, rolling onto his back and lacing his hands behind his head. “I mean . . . just how in the hell . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” Rane replied. “I would never have thought you even would have wanted to kiss me, not in a hundred years, and here we are in this - this bed of lust together . . .”

Sirius snorted. “You never would have thought I’d wanted to _kiss_ you? _Really?”_

Rane edged closer to him, and timidly pressed her naked body against his. He moved the arm nearest her out of her way and then, when she was close, settled it down around her, stroking her shoulder with his thumb. Rane stroked his chest gently, liking the way his skin felt - cool, sweaty, very there.

“Nope,” Rane answered. “No way.”

“Rane,” said Sirius, “I don’t know a man or beast alive who wouldn’t give his right eye for the chance. I’ve always thought you were bloody beautiful. Always. From the first day I saw you.”

“Why didn’t you ever -?”

“What, tell you?” Sirius said, looking down at her out of the corner of his eye. He squeezed her shoulder gently. “And then what? What good’s it going to do you to know that a bloody convict on the run from the law is -?”

He stopped abruptly, seeming to realize what he was saying. He lay very still for a moment, his hand unmoving on Rane’s shoulder. He was looking at the ceiling determinedly, frowning slightly.

“What?” Rane said quietly.

Sirius took a breath and let it out through pursed lips. “Forget it,” he said in a falsely offhand tone.

“Come on,” Rane sat up on her elbow, her face inches from his. He looked up at her, the flickering candlelight reflecting in his eyes.

“Just . . . I’m not exactly . . .” Sirius trailed off, his face slightly flushed, looking exasperated.

Rane looked at him for a moment, then leaned down and kissed his forehead, the bridge of his nose, his mouth; she trailed her fingers down the hollow of his throat, feeling a strange sense of protectiveness for Sirius that came naturally and powerfully. Sirius placed a hand behind her neck and pulled her mouth to his, and his kiss was warm, tender. She lay down beside him, lay her head on his chest and listened for a moment to the low, steady beating of his heart, strong and deep inside him. His hand crept over to her, caressed her hair, and she reached up and took it in her own, their fingers laced.

“Stay with me tonight,” Sirius murmured, and kissed her forehead gently.

Rane squeezed his hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered.

Soon they were asleep, wound together, content in a way neither of them had been for a very long time.

 


	2. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sirius displays an exemplary control of himself in company, as per usual

Rane’s eyes opened, quite suddenly, and for a moment she wasn’t sure where she was, because the ceiling she was looking at wasn’t the one she was accustomed to. The sounds of Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger gently snoring nearby wasn’t evident either. To her left, there was a bedside table, empty except two candles that were burned down to the quick, barely living flames within a melted pool of sallow wax that had coated both the hooked candleholders and most of the top of the wooden surface. The room smelled like sweat and burning wickers, a not entirely unpleasant blend. The room was awash in the thin golden-red light of dawn, setting affable shadows against all it touched.

What was more, she was, she realized, completely naked, lying on her back, quite warm . . . and not alone.

She turned her head to the right, feeling her long hair pulling taut beneath the small of her back, and saw Sirius Black.

His profile was visible in the dim half-light, the golden glow illuminating the pared shape of his jaw line, the soft curve of his forehead, the gentle gather of his lips, the roughness of his unshaven chin. He was breathing gently, still perfectly peaceful in sleep, unperturbed by her movement. His scant blanket, threadbare and worn, was pulled down to his navel, and Rane could see that she wasn’t the only one that was at least mostly nude. One arm was slung around her, cupping her shoulder with a gentle unconscious concern. His body was extraordinarily warm against hers, the calm motions of his respiration pressing against her bare ribs.

And now, it was all beginning to come back to her . . . Her middle-of-the-night excursion to the terrace to beleaguer her insomnia, not dissimilar from any other evening; finding Sirius sitting there, smoking a clandestine cigarette away from Molly’s prying eyes; their kiss, so completely unforeseen; and then . . .

 _Jesus Christ, did we fuck_?

The thought struck her as almost . . . Well, implausible. She, Rane, was . . . Well, nobody, really. She was twenty-five, freshly through the Auror examination, had hardly seen battle, had been recruited by the Order of the Phoenix not even a year ago, and her only claim to any kind of real reputation was her stupid goddamned half-bloodedness. Her father, an Elven warrior and a wizard, and her Muggle mother had passed on that bullshit to her. And since she’d found out, just under nine years ago, she had been stoically convinced that companionless was the only way she could ensue, not only for her career, but for the stigma of her parentage. Save her father, there were no other Elves employed in the Ministry of Magic, and for that matter there were hardly any Elves within the magical community itself. They stayed within their own ranks, and the wizards and witches stayed in theirs; Rane, alone in her pairing between them, was caught gracelessly in the middle of this not-quite-hostile duality.

Apart entirely from any of this, she hadn’t so much as kissed anyone for longer than she could recall. Yet here she lay, in bed with Sirius goddam Black, who she’d known only since Voldemort’s return, who she’d sat across from in Order meetings and clinked mugs of wine with over meals, who had shown her one afternoon on a whim how to properly greet his pet hippogriff, Buckbeak, for whom she‘d always fostered a certain affection. She had liked his affability, his easy grace, his astute eyes, the way he seemed to fear few things. The rest of the Order members had seemed stiff and painfully somber; Sirius was the one that would catch her eye across the table and wink when Mad-Eye said something particularly barmy. One evening, after Dumbledore had concluded a meeting and Rane was gathering up plates and goblets for Molly, Sirius had offhandedly asked her if she was married.

 _No one’s even managed to put up with me for more than a couple of hours yet_ , she’d replied with droll surprise. It had been true enough; her burgeoning career as an Auror coupled with her dealings with the Elves kept her very occupied and very isolated, a bit of a double-edged sword in many ways. The idea of marriage had occurred to her only insofar that it granted her absolution from her mother’s occasional queries; the idea of a relationship hardly entered her mind at all. The four or five times in the past year that she’d halfheartedly agreed to some proposal from a bloke at work or something had finished quickly after her suitors had realized how little time and effort she was actually prepared to put in, how quickly her interest lapsed into courtesy and then into apathy.

 _Well, I’ve managed to put up with you all evening_ , Sirius had replied, gathering up his own stack of plates, _though I do wish you’d have left that accent in America, it’s dreadful_. . .

Rane had put on an ersatz English lilt, screwing up her face at him. _Oh, do forgive me, guv’nah, terribly sorry_ . . .

 _Not at all, ma‘am, not at all_ , Sirius had replied pertly in an exaggerated Texas drawl, and Rane had snorted, kicking at him playfully. He had thrown her a coy grin over one shoulder as he’d gone loping off into the kitchen with his dishes, and Rane, who had only a nodding acquaintance with proper flirting, had felt an abrupt and completely unexpected warmth in her belly at the sight of that grin.

Now, lying in bed with him, she placed the palm of her hand against his bristly cheek and moved his face closer to hers. His eyes fluttered open, surprisingly gray, the reddish glow of the dawn reflected within them like deep flames.

“Hi,” Rane said tentatively.

“Hi,” Sirius replied softly, his voice gravelly with sleep. One hand reached up, pushed the tendrils of her hair from her face. “You’re still here.”

“I told you I’d stay,” Rane said. She leaned forward and brushed her lips on his gently.

Sirius stretched richly, groaning, resettling his arm around her, and moved onto one side so that he could look down at her properly.

“So,” he said, running his fingers up her arm lightly, “let’s hear it.”

Rane lifted her eyebrows questioningly.

“How are you feeling about everything now morning’s come?”

“Everything?” said Rane.

“Yes, everything. The sex bit in particular.”

“We had _sex?_ Oh, my _god_ . . . ”

Sirius chuckled, but his eyes remained fixed on her, serious and perhaps a touch anxious.

“Come on, out with it.”

Rane took a breath and let it out. “How do I feel about it,” she said pensively. She thought for a moment, feeling Sirius’s eyes on her. In truth, the sex bit, as Sirius had put it, wasn’t the first thing that had come to her mind when he’d asked her how she felt; it was what he had seemed to be about to say afterwards that leapt into her mind. But she felt she wasn’t quite equipped to tackle that one just yet; best leave that for when the sun was a little higher in the sky.

“I can’t believe it happened,” she said at length, looking at him frankly. “But I’m glad it did.”

“Ohthankfuck,” Sirius said in one word, rolling onto his back and covering his face with his free hand. He dragged it to his chin, staring at her over his fingers. “You aren’t upset?” He asked her, his voice muffled.

She shook her head. “Are you . . . ?”

Sirius stopped her words with his mouth, placing one warm hand on her cheek. “Never thought it‘d happen,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. “I’m glad as fuck that it did, though.”

“Me too,” Rane replied truthfully. She sighed. “This next part is going to be a bit harder . . . “

“Bit harder than what, me?” Sirius asked, grinning at her.

Rane cocked an eyebrow at him. “D’you have any idea how I’m going to get out of here without letting the whole headquarters know I spent the night with you?”

Sirius sat up, his brow furrowed. “Blimey . . . Hadn’t thought of that . . . “

“Do you think everyone’s already awake?” she asked him anxiously. “Ginny and Hermione and the rest of them?”

“Dunno,” said Sirius pensively. “We’ll be alright, though. You go down first, that’s all. None the wiser.”

“I hope Dumbledore and Mad Eye aren’t here,” Rane murmured worriedly.

“Dumbledore wouldn’t have you on the outs just because you slept with me, Rane,” Sirius said, looking at her in surprise. “Mad Eye wouldn’t either, for that matter. He’s a nutter, he might give you a hard time about it, but he wouldn’t -”

“I’ve only just passed my exams, how do you think it’s going to look?” she murmured, rubbing her face. “Being posted on guard here and then ending up . . . Well, ending up here,” she finished, rather apologetically. “Office hooker status guaranteed for life in the Order, no doubt about it . . .”

“You worry too much,” Sirius grumbled, throwing the blankets off of him and straightening. Nude, he stood with his back to Rane, stretching richly, and Rane had a moment to admire the long muscles in his back flexing in the contrast of the golden morning glow.

A moment of silence passed between them. Sirius had laced his hands behind his neck, his shoulder flexed. Presently, he placed them on his hips and looked down, the fine hairs on the crown of his head glowing in the morning light like a crown. Rane could hear birds chirping dimly.

“So, is that it, then?” he said, very quietly, not looking at her.

“What do you mean?”

Sirius didn’t face her, not quite; he half-turned, though, so that Rane could make out some of his profile through the sheet of his hair, moving minutely with his gentle breath. He was still looking at the floor, as if ashamed.

“Will I . . .” His throat worked as he swallowed. “Will I see you again?”

Rane threw the blankets off of her as well and went to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face between his shoulder blades and basking in the pleasant morning smell of him. She felt him relax in her grip, felt the tips of his fingers brushing lightly against her forearm. And now, she was thinking again about what had happened between them, really thinking about it. The suddenness of what had happened the night before, the furor of it - it hadn’t been like the times she was used to. It wasn’t one of her one-night stands with some Johnny-come-lately from who-gives-a-shit-where, some wizard from a tavern she’d stopped in after her duty was finished perhaps, a dry business-like transaction that had led to the mindless, methodical motions of two unaffiliated participants who parted ways as quickly as they’d come together, the encounter forgotten by noon. It hadn’t even been like the handful of men she’d dated, men who were far more enamored by her than she had been with them. This had been hard, full of unspoken emotion, and with the fury and rushing, slightly frantic ardor of floodgates flung wide open after what had been perhaps months of amassing rumination.

Rane tightened her grip briefly, then placed a gentle kiss on Sirius’s back. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice muffled against him. She paused, then added, “I want to.”

“You do?” His voice, timid, so frighteningly unlike his usual boisterous affect.

Rane nodded against him.

Sirius took a big breath and released it, squeezing her wrist. “Good.”  


“Good morning, Rane!”

Rane grinned at Remus as she came into the dining room where everyone was down for breakfast, hoping she didn‘t look as guilty as she felt. Remus, Molly and Arthur were busying themselves with bacon and the Daily Prophet on the far side of the table; Hermione, Ginny, Ron, and Harry had taken up spots nearer the door, and she was glad for her part that Hermione in particular was facing away from her; Hermione was as clever as any grown witch and Rane felt certain that if anyone was capable of calling her out aside from Dumbledore or Mad Eye (neither of which, thankfully, was in evidence), it was her. She sat down beside Ron Weasley and took a cinnamon roll.

“Oh, hello, Rane, dear,” said Molly, waving her wand; an old-fashioned mug of coffee manifested itself, and she slid it towards Rane with a smile. “We didn’t think we’d see you for a bit, I was certain you‘d be exhausted after pulling night duty Friday.”

“Well, you know me, practically nocturnal anyway,” Rane said, taking the coffee gratefully. “Did you guys sleep okay?”

“Like a rock,” said Ron, yawning.

“I did as well,” said Ginny, “Didn’t even hear you get up, actually - did you, Hermione?”

“No, I didn’t either,” Hermione agreed, looking at Rane over the rim of her coffee. 

“Were you up again late last night?” Harry asked her, glancing sidelong at her. “I thought I heard you coming in from the terrace.”

“I was, yeah,” Rane replied carefully, silently ruing her conversation about not sleeping well with Harry a few nights prior. “I hope I didn’t wake you up . . .”

“When did you come back to bed, anyway?” Hermione asked. She was still looking at Rane over her mug.

Rane made a bit of a business of stuffing more of her roll into her mouth, but was rescued by Arthur, who had just lowered his Prophet.

“Any news from Dumbledore?”

“Nothing yet,” said Remus, sipping his coffee. “Last I heard from him was a fortnight ago.”

“I haven’t talked to him since he assigned me duty last week,” said Rane, kindling to this welcome change of topic. “I’m sure he’s busy.”

“Have you been to the Ministry yet this weekend?” Arthur asked her. “Kingsley asked me to tell you to come see him in his office before the week is out, he wants to discuss Sirius -”

Rane choked on her coffee and began to cough.

“- and what’s being told to the Minister about his location,” Arthur finished, setting down his mug and looking at her with some concern. “Are you alright? Went down the wrong pipe, did it?”

“Fine!” Rane spluttered.

“Yes, well,” said Arthur, eyeing her, “do be sure to pop in and pay him a visit when you get to the office, won’t you?”

“’Course!” Rane replied in a strangled voice, “I’ll go see him as soon as I’m -”

“Top o’ the morning to ye!” cried a genial, familiar voice behind her.

A moment later, Sirius had sat himself down beside Remus, directly across the table from her. Rane stared at him.

“Alright, Sirius?” said Harry.

“Delightful!” Sirius replied, looking positively jolly. “You lot look like a sprightly bunch this morning!”

Unlike Rane, he didn’t look even remotely uncomfortable; indeed, he was the picture of good health, ruddy and freshly shaven, looking rather dapper in a casual blazer, his long black hair tamed into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. If you didn’t know better you’d think he got lucky last night, Rane thought to herself, and had to lower her face into her coffee cup to hide her smile.

“You look quite dashing today,” said Molly, looking at him with some surprise.

“Well, thank you,” said Sirius, nodding to her graciously while choosing a kipper from the plate in the center of the table.

“What’s the occasion?” asked Ron, gnawing on a strip of bacon. “Hot date or something?”

Rane cleared her throat loudly.

“You‘re looking lovely today, Rane,” Sirius said, throwing a lopsided grin at her.

“I - I mean, I’m - um - am I?”

“Pretty as a picture,” said Sirius. “Isn’t she, Mooney? Certainly a lovely thing.”

“Quite beautiful,” Remus agreed politely. “Just like her mum.”

“Yes, quite beautiful, I agree,” Sirius said softly, resting his chin on his fist and staring at her with unfiltered affection.

“Bet her _boyfriend_ wouldn't thank you for flirting with her, Sirius,” said Ginny around her orange juice, looking severely at him.

“That right?” Sirius asked her, looking into her eyes.

Rane mumbled something into her cinnamon roll.

“Sorry, what?” Harry said, glancing up at her. “I didn’t quite -”

“I said, I don’t have one,” Rane said a tad louder, her cheeks chipmunk-like in their fullness. “A boyfriend, I mean.”

“Ah,” said Sirius, nodding at Harry. “Well. In any case . . . lovely.”

Rane had flushed a deep crimson. She stared into Sirius’s face, feeling a mixture of exasperation and affection towards him that quite tied her tongue. And now, of course, everyone else was looking at her too, bewildered by her inelegance. In particular, Molly and Hermione were watching her with sudden curiosity; Harry, meanwhile, was attempting to rub the fingerprints off his wand with a wad of his jumper and Ron was picking kipper out of his teeth.

“Thanks,” Rane finished gracelessly, and crammed a wad of cinnamon roll into her mouth, hoping she wouldn’t be asked to comment further.

There was a slightly awkward silence at the table, broken only by Ron’s unlovely chewing sounds.

“Are you alright, Rane?” Remus asked her.

Rane cleared her throat and met his eyes, straightening a little. “Yeah! I’m - I’m really - I’m good, thanks. How are you?”

Remus’s eyebrows were in danger of disappearing into his hairline. “I’m quite good, thank you.”

“Well!” said Arthur, clapping his hands and standing up, seemingly quite oblivious to the tension. “I best be off. Molly, love, I’ll try to be home tonight for supper straightaway.”

“Of course, dear,” said Molly as Arthur bent and planted a kiss on her temple.

“Arthur, I’d been meaning to tell you,” said Remus, mercifully turning his attention from Rane for a moment, “there was something I would like you to research in the Ministry archives for me regarding Rodolphus Lestrange . . .”

While Remus was speaking to Arthur, Rane turned a sharp eye on Sirius over her coffee mug. He was smirking at her, crunching idly on a kipper.

“It’s fine!” Sirius said in a low voice, leaning across the table to address her. Harry and Ron, Rane noticed, were speaking together, but Hermione was watching their exchange with interest. “What are you so worried about, anyway?”

“Worried?” Hermione said. “Who’s worried? About what?”

“Nothing,” said Rane quickly, “it’s just -”

“She’s worried,” said Sirius loudly, speaking over her, “that someone might get the wrong idea because we were both up last night and met out on the veranda.”

And now, of course, Ron and Harry were listening too, and Rane took such a large gulp of coffee that her throat seared, feeling her forehead burning.

“What d’you mean?” said Ron.

“Like, you _planned_ meeting out there?” Harry chimed in, looking between them.

“No!” Sirius replied. He had lost none of his conviviality, Rane noticed, and she grudgingly admired him for it. “No, we both just . . . Couldn’t sleep. Happened on each other in the wee hours.”

“Oh, were you smoking again?” said Hermione.

Now it was Sirius’s turn to look astonished. Rane laughed in spite of herself at his unmistakable surprise.

“What? Smoking, I don’t -!”

“Well, I’ve seen you out there, haven’t I?” said Hermione loftily, stirring her coffee. “It’s quite alright, I won’t tell Mrs. Weasley . . . “

“I - well, alright, so . . . I suppose I may have been smoking,” said Sirius, ruffled. “And Rane couldn’t sleep either, so we both just -”

“We just sat together on the porch,” Rane interrupted, casting Sirius a dark glance. “And it was just -”

“Did you two snog?” said Ron suddenly.

Rane and Sirius were both stunned into silence at this. Ron, still chewing his kipper, was looking at them with frank, polite interest.

“Well?” he said after a moment. “Did you?”

Rane and Sirius exchanged a look, and what Rane saw on Sirius’s reddening face - total and absolute bafflement - made her laugh.

“We . . . Well, never mind,” she said, still laughing helplessly.

“Ron, old man, what a thing to say!” said Sirius, though he was grinning too.

Ron, Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance, but Rane was too busy looking across the table at Sirius, who had met her eyes. She held his gaze, busily admiring his tenacity if nothing else.


	3. A Lesson in Romance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rane Roth experiences an abrupt change in employment.

“You can’t possibly be serious.”

Rane stared at the Minister in complete shock. Fudge was standing before her, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, his bowler hat trembling in the breeze. It was a cool day for September, the sun riding high in a grayish sky. They were standing outside a pub, Rane clad in jeans and a hoody, Fudge in a rather gaudy pinstriped muggle suit.

“Well, I’m sorry to say that I am,” said Fudge, giving her a smile that suggested he wasn’t sorry at all. “I’m not the one that makes these decisions, I’m afraid, the Wizengamot are the ones that call the shots on this sort of thing -”

“But . . . Surely there’s _something_ you can do -?”

But Fudge was shaking his head.

“I’m afraid not, my dear . . . You’ll be compensated of course, very well taken care of and everything, but the decision was made and of course we must abide by these things . . .”

Rane stood silent in the windy afternoon, her mouth hanging open, staring helplessly. She had just lost her job. Fudge had taken her to the pub under the premise of “having a chat” and then told her that the Wizengamot had voted on her dismissal, citing that her Elven blood may interfere with her impartiality as an Auror. She had been completely blindsided; her career was her passion, and to be told that something entirely out of her control was the cause for it being snatched away from her was nothing short of devastating.

“Sir . . .” Rane took a steadying breath and released it, willing herself not to get angry and make things worse. “Sir, this is . . . This is highly unusual. My heritage has never interfered with my work, I think I deserve an opportunity to appeal this, or _something_ -”

“Ah, I’m afraid the Wizengamot’s made up their minds,” said Fudge, shaking his head. “It’s not, er, a situation we’ve encountered in the past, and you must understand that of course this isn’t to do with your performance as an Auror . . . We just feel that, given the current political climate and all . . . You understand . . . Can’t have an Elf in such a delicate position, it isn’t fair to the rest of them -”

“Not fair?” Rane gaped at him. It was taking every ounce of self-control she had not to betray the mounting fury she felt. “The only person this isn’t fair to is _me_ -”

“Well, some of the senior Aurors seem to feel you’ve got an advantage, you see,” Fudge went on. “And of course there is the issue of your father, as well . . . It puts the Ministry at risk, having someone of your - er, ethnicity - working so closely alongside delicate information . . .”

Rane stared at Fudge, unable to believe what she was hearing.

 _“’Delicate’_ \- sir, are you suggesting I’m relaying information to the Elves?”

“No, of course not, of course not, nothing of the sort,” Fudge stammered, but Rane knew she’d just hit the nail on the head. He didn’t want the Elves wise to the Ministry’s dealings. And just like that, she’d come to the very heart of the reason why she was being fired; Fudge was afraid of the Elves. He didn’t want their interference.

“Minister,” said Rane, forcing her voice to remain calm. “I can assure you that the Council knows as much as we do without having to be told. Probably more. There’s nothing anyone can do about that even if we wanted to, certainly firing me isn’t going to stop them from being privy to what’s going on, and shutting them out at a time like this isn’t a good idea, surely you must -”

“So you _have_ been relaying information, then?” Fudge interrupted her quickly, looking exultant.

“No, I _haven’t,”_ Rane said slowly. “I don’t need to tell them _anything._ They already know everything they think they need to -”

“What on earth would the Elves want with information from the Ministry of Magic, then?” Fudge said sharply. “Do you think it very wise to allow them further access to -?”

“I haven’t allowed them further access to anything, I’ve just told you!” Rane said, her voice rising. “And as to what they would do with any information they might have, I don’t have any idea because I’m not on the council, but I’d be willing to bet good money that for starters they would use it to keep us safe, like they always have!”

“Safe? Safe from what?”

“Safe from _what?_ How about from the Death Eaters?” Rane said loudly. “And Voldemort!”

Fudge fell silent. He was looking at her with a triumphant, smug expression, nodding, as if he‘d been expecting this lunacy all along.

“Well,” he said. “I think I’ve said quite enough here. I think it’s wise not to keep a - a double agent in the field with continued access to -”

“A _double agent_?!” Rane was nearly shouting now, her eyes blazing, the wind whipping her long hair hither and yon. A couple walking into the pub together gave her a startled look and hurried on. “A double agent?! Are you joking right now?”

“My dear girl!” said Fudge, his own voice rising. “I assure you this is no joke! Now, if there’s nothing else, it’s getting quite late!”

Rane stared at Fudge. She had never particularly liked him - he was blustering, a little longwinded and haughty - but she would never have thought he would be standing before her in this capacity, a short, angry man who was so unwilling to see the truth in front of his face that he was cutting off his only real envoy to perhaps the most powerful allies on his side.

Rane spun wordlessly on her heel and strode off. Once she was safely out of eyeshot of the pub, she Disapparated, not bothering to look over her shoulder to see whether Fudge was still standing there watching her.

 

“Rane! My goodness, I didn’t expect to see you so soon!”

Mrs. Weasley had opened the door to headquarters clad in a housedress, a dishtowel thrown over her forearm.

“I hope it’s not too late, Molly,” said Rane, closing the door behind her. “I was hoping I could stay tonight, I was just around the corner in London . . .”

“I’m afraid most of the Order has already gone,” Mrs. Weasley said, waving her wand at the door; the numerous locks and bolts there snapped themselves shut. “You’re welcome to kip out with Hermione and Ginny upstairs, of course. Is everything alright?”

“I . . . well . . .” Rane looked at Mrs. Weasley’s careworn face, her brow furrowed with concern, and decided she couldn’t quite summon the courage to say any more. “Yes, I’m good. Just wasn’t up for the journey home.”

“Well, of course, dear, make yourself at home,” said Mrs. Weasley. “There’s some leftover stew in the cauldron I think, if you’re puckish -”

“Is Sirius here?” Rane asked before she could stop herself.

Mrs. Weasley turned to look at her in surprise. “Of course dear, where else would he be?” she said. “I expect he’s upstairs, I haven’t seen him since supper. He’s certainly been in a foul mood lately . . .”

“Why is that?”

“I suppose you’d have to ask him,” said Mrs. Weasley grimly. “Did you need to see him about something?”

Rane shook her head, feeling Mrs. Weasley’s eyes on her. “I just - silly of me - well, I’m off to bed, Molly, I’ll see you tomorrow morning . . . Thank you again . . .”  
She strode off toward the stairway and thundered up them, leaving Mrs. Weasley to watch her ascension curiously.  


Rane walked past Hermione’s and Ginny’s doorway, having no intention to stop, and continued to the third floor. Sirius’s door was shut, but she could see the flicker of candlelight coming from the gap beneath it and felt certain he was awake. She paused before the door, lifted a hand to knock, and hesitated.

 _What am I doing_? she wondered abruptly. _What am I doing, showing up unannounced at his door like this? How do I know he even wants to see me_?

The thought brought a wave of genuine desolation over her, the culmination of the loss of her job not even an hour ago coupled now with the painful realization that she could be easily making something out of nothing. The fact of the matter was that Sirius had just had sex with her, randomly, one evening about a week beforehand. He had seemed ready to say . . . Something . . . that Rane hadn’t anticipated, yes, but was any of it true? Or was it just the farce of a man high on the afterglow? And if it was, would she know? Did she even know Sirius at all?

She turned her head, her fist still lifted before the door, and looked directly into her own eyes in the framed mirror that hung on the wall there. Her eyes traced the curve of her neck, the glisten of her hazel eyes, the flow of her long dark hair over her shoulder, the flatness of her belly just visible beneath the rim of her hoody. There she stood, tall and lean and indecisive, hesitating before the door of this man like a teenager; her face filled with uncertainty.

 _This can’t be who I am_ , she thought fiercely. _I’m stronger than this, I’m not some . . . Some doe-eyed twelve year old, falling in love with the first guy who gives me a moment’s attention._

And then, on the tail of this: _I’m not in love with him, though. I’m not, am I_?

She lowered her fist, feeling the first touch of shame, and turned away, meaning to walk down the stairs and back out the front door, back to her own flat, where she would pour herself a glass of wine or three, send an owl to Dumbledore and her father, and decide what the next step was. But the door opened behind her, and she turned, her hair whirling around her head, and she was looking into Sirius’s face.

He stood with one hand on the door, naked save a pair of worn trousers, his dark hair in disarray.

“Rane?”

They stared at each other for a moment. Rane looked frightened; Sirius looked shocked into silence.

“I’m sorry, I just - I didn’t - I didn’t mean to wake you up, I just got here,” Rane stammered ineptly.

“You didn’t wake me up,” said Sirius, still staring at her. “I just - I didn’t expect you . . . Where’ve you been?”

This question took Rane by surprise. She hadn’t been at headquarters since the week prior, after her awkward breakfast with Sirius. He had looked vibrant that day, nary a care in the world; the Sirius that stood before her now looked less than well. There were shadows beneath his eyes and his face was unshaven.

“I didn’t think you wanted to see me,” Sirius told her. An expression was stealing over his face that Rane didn’t recognize for what it was right away; hurt. And now she saw the true idiocy of her hesitation at Sirius’s door, the true selfishness. She had been so caught up in her own doubt, the potential for her own anguish, that she had not given a thought to Sirius, who she’d left the morning after they’d been together and not returned since then.

“I didn’t think you wanted to see me, either,” she said in barely more than a whisper. She shook her head, then lowered her gaze to the floor and began to turn away. “I should go, I shouldn’t have -”

Then Sirius had pulled her to him, and his arms were around her, and she was awash in his warmth and the familiar scent of him. He spoke in a hushed voice at her ear, his breath hot on her skin, one hand on the back of her head.

“You don’t have to go,” he said softly. Then, after a pause: “Please don’t. Don’t go.”

A moment passed like this, and then Sirius drew back, holding her by the shoulders, looking frankly into her eyes, and Rane saw that his own dark eyes were glistening with tears in the dim light.

“Please don’t go,” he whispered again, stroking her hair out of her face with infinite tenderness. “Don’t make me wait any longer for you.”

Rane stared at him, then abandoning all pretense leaned forward and kissed him fiercely, basking in the taste of his mouth against hers, feeling the hotness of his exhale against her. She drew back and placed her forehead on his, her eyes closed, relishing him.

“I missed you,” she said fiercely, surrendering to whatever consequences came of this pronouncement. “I missed you, Sirius . . .”

“I missed you too,” Sirius told her, his voice trembling slightly. “So damn much.”

They remained that way for a moment, their breath coming in quick gasps.

“Come lay with me,” said Sirius. “Stay with me tonight. Tell me what’s happened. Alright?”

He met her eyes, their faces still touching, his eyes brimming with the same relief and emotion Rane knew she was feeling. She nodded, biting her lip, and let him take her hand, leading her into his bedroom. She shut the door behind them with a soft snick.

 

SIRIUS’S room was a mess. Piles of empty, blood-soaked sacks were piled in the corner; robes littered the floor, and several goblets sat on the dresser table, some of them overturned. One of these, closest to Sirius’s bed, was still partially full of what looked like wine.

“I’ve been in a right state,” said Sirius, following her gaze abashedly. “Been a few years since I’ve had to deal with a proper rejection . . .”

“Rejec - how, _how_ did I reject you?” Rane said as he sat on his bed, keeping his eyes on her. “I haven’t even _been_ here since -!”

“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” said Sirius, looking down at his hands. “You haven’t been here.”

Rane fell silent.

“I thought . . .” Sirius ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I thought you might have regretted it, Rane. Been avoiding me. When I didn’t see you at the meetings I thought for sure that was what it was, it’s not like you to miss them . . . Even Bill mentioned it.” Sirius barked a rather cynical laugh. “He kept saying maybe you’d met someone and it was keeping you away, you can imagine how I felt hearing that . . .”

“Why do _you_ care if I met someone or not?” Rane asked him suddenly.

Sirius scoffed at once, shaking his head, but said nothing. Rane looked at him for a moment longer then dismissed this.

“I’ve just been working, Sirius,” she said, but abruptly she wasn’t sure if that was entirely true. Hadn’t she been sort of circumventing headquarters since she’d slept with Sirius? Hadn’t a part of her perhaps subconsciously found something else to keep her occupied both times a meeting had been held that week? Hadn’t this fear of meaning nothing to Sirius, who she would necessarily need to spend time around as long as she was in the Order of the Phoenix, kept her corralled at the Ministry a little more than usual?

What was worse, she realized, he had been on her mind almost constantly. She’d gone over and over their night together, talking herself in circles, trying to deny that she had felt something more than just carnal desire for him, justifying what Sirius had said to her as the heat of the moment . . .

“Okay,” she said, sitting down next to him and looking at him frankly. “Okay, so it was a little weird at first -”

“Weird? Blimey,” said Sirius woefully, clutching his heart. “Weird, she says -!”

“No - not because of you, because of me,” Rane said unsmilingly. Sirius fell silent, looking at her. “I didn’t know . . . I dunno . . . How to . . .”

She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair roughly. “I suck at this,” she said after a moment. “I didn’t think - I dunno, I didn’t think I meant anything to you. I’m just some . . . Some random girl you fucked -”

“Rane, you’re the _only_ random girl I’ve fucked,” Sirius told her. “The only one. In ages. And certainly the only one I’ve . . . Well, wanted to see more of. A lot more.”

This pronouncement hung between them pregnantly.

“I just . . . I didn’t think you cared this much,” Rane said again softly.

“Didn’t you seem me welling up out there?” Sirius asked her quietly. “That seem like something a bloke would do if you didn’t mean anything to him?”

Rane said nothing.

“Now,” said Sirius, kicking back on his bed and putting his hands behind his head. He patted the spot beside him. “Come on. Tell me what’s up, because I can tell you’re in a right state.”

Rane sighed gloomily. In the heat of the moment she’d nearly forgotten about her talk with the Minister. She scooted backwards, laid down on her back next to Sirius and looked up at his ceiling, trying to decide where to begin.

“I got shitcanned,” she said after a moment.

Sirius propped himself up on an elbow and looked at her, paling considerably. “Oh, bloody hell, did Mad-Eye find out or -?”

“No,” said Rane, shaking her head, though she couldn’t suppress a smile. The idea that she had worried she would lose her job because someone found out she’d spent the night with Sirius seemed darkly ironic now. “No, nothing to do with you, I promise.”

Sirius rolled back onto his back and sighed loudly with relief. “Right, well, what was it, then?”

“Fudge thinks I’m a spy for the Elves.”

“That’s barmy.”

“I know it is,” said Rane, “but he’s convinced. He doesn’t want them to know anything about what’s happening inside the Ministry, I guess. I dunno. It blindsided me. Completely out of left field.”

“I’d like a few minutes alone with that bastard,” Sirius growled darkly. “That’s two innocent people now he’s sorted onto the wrong side . . .”

“I have to get in touch with Dumbledore tomorrow,” said Rane. “He’ll know what to do.”

There was a sudden knock at the door. Rane and Sirius both jumped.

“Oh, _shit!”_ Rane hissed, looking wildly around for somewhere to hide.

“Blimey, calm down,” Sirius said, though he looked worried himself. “Yes, who is it!?”

“It’s me,” said Lupin’s voice from behind the door, “I need to talk to you -”

“Er, um, right hang on mate!” Sirius said, stumbling to his feet. He snatched up a t-shirt adorned with the logo of the Holyhead Harpies from where he’d chucked it onto the floor and pulled it on hastily. “Hang on, hang on -!”

Rane had leapt to her feet as well, still looking around for a hiding place; however, she was out of luck. There wasn’t so much as a closet for her to jump into. And now the doorknob was turning.

“I’m coming in, find your trousers,” Lupin said, sounding bemused.

Behind the door! Sirius mouthed at her, pointing wildly to the doorway. Rane didn’t have time to hesitate; she rushed to the doorway, cramming herself into the crevice there just as Lupin stepped in, mere inches away from him. Visible in the crack between the edge of the door and the wall she could now see Sirius, sitting on the bed looking simultaneously nonchalant and guilty.

“Evening Moony, what’s got you out of bed?” he said in an absurdly casual voice.

“Got a moment?” Lupin asked him, striding over to the bed and taking a seat next to Sirius.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” said Sirius.

“Well - er, did you know your shirt’s inside out?” Lupin said suddenly.

Sirius looked comically surprised, and Rane had to put a hand over her mouth to suppress an involuntary giggle.

“Oh - blimey - well,” Sirius said rather ineptly. “That’s - I’ll fix - anyway, what was it you needed to -?”

“Molly’s just come and told me Rane is here for the night,” Lupin told Sirius.

Rane had to admire Sirius’s poker face, which betrayed not the slightest hint that he was well aware of this fact. “That right?”

“Yes,” Lupin said, nodding. “Look, Sirius . . . I’ve spoken to Arthur and Bill about this . . . We’ve all noticed you’ve been acting a bit odd lately.”

“Odd? How so?”

“Well - staying in your room, not speaking to anyone . . .” He gestured to the rash of clothes on the floor and the wine goblets on the bedside table. “Drinking, letting things get filthy . . .

You don’t seem like yourself at all.”

Lupin shifted on the bed. He seemed to be thinking of a way to phrase what he was about to say.

“Sirius, do you have a bit of a thing for Rane?” he said at last.

For a moment Sirius only gaped at Lupin, utterly nonplussed. Rane, too, was staring at Lupin from behind the door, her mouth slightly agape.

“A _thing?”_ Sirius managed at last.

“You know . . . A romantic thing.”

Sirius seemed at a loss for words.

“Alright, well . . .” Sirius cleared his throat. “May I ask why you’re worried with who or what I have . . . things . . . for?”

“Well, to be honest,” said Lupin frankly, “I think it would be nice for the rest of us to know what’s been bothering you.”

“Erm . . . Well,” said Sirius, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose I do a bit, yeah. She’s lovely.”

“Yes, she is,” said Lupin, nodding. “Quite lovely.”

A brief silence fell between them.

“I think you should talk to her tomorrow,” said Lupin at last.

“Talk to her about what, exactly?”

“Tell her how you feel,” said Lupin. “It’s clear that you’ve got feelings for her. Seeing you at breakfast with her last weekend, I would be very surprised if Harry, Ron and Hermione aren’t wise to it too, to be quite honest with you . . .”

“Alright,” said Sirius, “I’ll tell her. If it makes you lot feel better.”

Lupin clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. It’ll do you good.”

“Right,” said Sirius, giving him an awkward smile. “’Course, Moony. Look, you don’t think Molly is going to -?”

“She’ll be as happy for you as the rest of us,” said Lupin, getting up. “I quite assure you.”

“Right,” said Sirius again. “Right.”

“Sleep well,” said Lupin, striding to the door. “I shall expect the whole story tomorrow morning.”

“’Night,” said Sirius, and with this Lupin pulled the doorknob shut. Rane heard his footsteps echoing down the hall as she stood next to the wall, looking at Sirius and grinning.

“I don‘t think that could have possibly been any more uncomfortable for either of us,” she said.  
Both of them burst out laughing.

“Well, if Moony noticed, I should think you‘ve cottoned on by now,” said Sirius quietly, watching her.

Rane leaned forward and kissed the corner of his mouth gently.

“Just . . . Come lay with me,” she said softly.

He did. And soon they were asleep, intertwined in one another’s arms while the crickets chirped ceaselessly outside.

 


	4. In Vino Veritas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sirius, Molly, Arthur, Bill, Remus, Mad-Eye and Tonks get sloshed and some uncomfortable truths emerge about the state of things.

  
“. . . An _absolutely_ terrible idea, Sirius, you could have really put yourself in a _very_ bad position, and did you _see_ all the people there?! _What_ Dumbledore will say when he finds out about this . . .!”

Coming through the door were Mrs. Weasley and Tonks, both of them wearing traveling cloaks; behind them trotted a large, bear-like black dog. All three of them were damp from the light rain coming down in the London streets.

“. . . and _really,_ I do realize you’ve been cooped up in here, but think of the risk of it!” Mrs. Weasley was going on, taking off her cloak.

The black dog paused in the hallway to shake himself off, showering Tonks and Mrs. Weasley. Tonks, who was wearing her usual spiky pink hair again now that the day’s work was through, groaned laughingly.

“Bugger off, Sirius, we’re already soaked through as it is . . .”

A flash of dim light cast the umbrella rack nearby into sharp shadowy contrast, and suddenly where the dog had stood, Sirius Black was now wringing out his long dark hair.

“Well?” Mrs. Weasley said impatiently, glaring at him. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Care for a pint, you two?” Sirius replied lightly. “I’m having one.”

Mrs. Weasley threw up her hands. “Oh, honestly!”

“Molly, will you give it a rest?” Sirius said, grinning at her in spite of himself. “It was just a bit of fun . . . I could hardly let Harry go to King’s Cross alone, could I -?”

“He was hardly alone,” said Mrs. Weasley shortly, brushing past Sirius. “Tonks and I were doing a fine job looking after the lot of them . . . Alastor will be just as furious as Dumbledore when he finds out . . .”

Sirius watched her stride off into the kitchen in exasperation. In spite of her anger with him, he was in excellent spirits this evening. Things had been . . . Well, they’d been better than they had been in years lately, no one could deny that much. He’d spent the afternoon escorting Harry, Ron, Hermione and the Weasleys to King’s Cross Station to board the train to Hogwarts, which meant he’d seen the outdoors beyond the terrace of Grimmauld Place for the first time in months.

And the journey had been tremendous, despite the rain; the familiar Platform 9 and ¾, the scores of Hogwarts students on their way to school, the laughter of the faces in the train windows as he’d bounded alongside the departing train, barking frantically, as jubilant as a child. He had seen Harry waving madly at him as they pulled away from the station, and even the regret of seeing his godson leaving his company for the next few months was a sweet sorrow.

And underlining all of this, catapulting him to exponential, intoxicating good cheer, was Rane. He’d seen her last just the day before; she had spent the night warm beside him, climbed on top of him an hour before sunrise, and made ardent love to him. As he had lay beneath her, his face transported with bliss, both hands gripping the firm flesh just above the swell of her hips, staring at her in perfect hypnosis, the idea had come to him that he had never seen anything as gorgeous as this girl, not in all his life. And when she had whispered in his ear that she would be back that evening, the feeling that arose in the center of his chest was beyond excitement; he could not wait to see her again. He had laid in his bed, spread-eagled, staring at his ceiling as the sun slowly rose, unable to believe that this all wasn’t some long and fanciful dream.

“Pints! Who’s having one?” he called loudly as he bounded into the kitchen.

“Me!” Tonks cried enthusiastically.

Sirius was pulling his wand as he went and waving it flamboyantly towards the cabinets. Remus Lupin, who was standing at the sink in the kitchen, ducked just in time to avoid being cuffed about the face by the cupboard door flying open. A moment later, a flurry of mugs was flying out of their own accord.

“Moony? You joining us?”

“Of course,” said Lupin, shutting the cupboard doors behind Sirius. “Draw Bill and Arthur up a few while you’re at it, they’re on their way . . .”

“And Mad-Eye!” Tonks called from the dining room.

“It’s been ages since I’ve done this spell,” Sirius said as the mugs lined themselves up on the table. “Here’s hoping it doesn’t come out too hoppy . . . _Cervisia!”_

The mugs filled themselves with ale at once, without so much as a single drop lost. Tonks clapped her hands together once, looking delighted.

“Blimey, I never knew you could do that!” she said, looking thoroughly impressed. “Who taught you?”

“James, I imagine,” said Lupin, smiling as he took the mug Sirius was offering him. “That’s just the kind of spell he would have loved . . .”

“The very same, indeed,” Sirius agreed heartily, handing out mugs. “Here, go on, Molly, have one -”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t, I’ll never get a thing done tomorrow!”

“Go on, Molly,” Tonks said, elbowing her. “One won’t hurt you.”

Mrs. Weasley accepted the mug from Sirius, eyeing it skeptically. “Oh, well, I suppose . . . You’re quite certain it’s safe, Sirius?”

“Not in the least bit, no,” Sirius muttered.

“What?”

“I think I heard the door, Mad-Eye must be here,” Sirius replied evasively.

They all heard the door shut in the corridor, and a moment later Mad-Eye Moody, Bill and Arthur Weasley were standing in the foyer, removing their soaked traveling cloaks. Mad-Eye’s magical blue eye was whirling around as per usual.

“Bloody mess outside, isn’t it?” said Bill, wringing out his ponytail. “Hullo, mum, Remus . . . Sirius, you look lively . . .”

“That beer?” said Mad-Eye with great interest, his magical eye swiveling between Sirius and the mugs on the table.

“What’s the occasion?” Mr. Weasley asked, shoving his wand into his pocket and removing a damp bowler hat from his balding head.

“No occasion necessary,” Sirius replied, taking a seat and pulling his own beer towards him.

Mad-Eye had taken a seat and was sniffing his mug suspiciously. A moment later it seemed he had deemed it safe for consumption, because he took a large gulp.

“It’s not bad!” said Tonks appreciatively. “Well done, mate!”

“All in the wrist,” Sirius told her solemnly.

“Shall we have a toast, then?” Lupin said as Bill and Mr. Weasley took seats at the table with the rest of them.

“To the Order,” said Bill, raising his mug.

“THE ORDER!” the rest of them echoed, and then they were bringing their mugs together in the center of the table, slopping beer everywhere.  
  
AN HOUR later found the lot of them well on the way to drunk.

“. . . and then I told her I wanted to give her French - I mean, _English_ \- lessons,” Bill was saying amidst laughter, “and then a few weeks ago we started seeing each other, and it’s been _brilliant_ . . .!”

“Fleur . . . _Fleur_ . . .” Lupin was shaking his head. “I dunno that I remember Fleur, have I met her?”

“Beauxbatons girl from the - _hic_ -Triwizard Tournament,” said Sirius.

Lupin’s face lit up. “Oh! Oh, right . . .”

“Oh, I’m so happy for you, dear!” Mrs. Weasley said, patting Bill’s face affectionately. Her cheeks had picked up a definite shade of pink as she sipped on her third beer. “Sometimes Arthur and I, we just can’t believe none of ours have found themselves anyone yet, but Arthur just tells me it’s just -”

“- _a matter of time_ ,” Mr. Weasley chimed in, and the two of them clutched each other and laughed like schoolgirls. Remus caught Sirius’s eye over his mug, grinning.

“I‘ve said it before and I‘ll say it again, never trust a veela,” Mad-Eye was saying disapprovingly, shaking his grizzled head. “They’re right clever, you know . . . They know just what your weakness is, and Bill here’s opened himself right up to it -!”

“Don‘t be mad, Mad-Eye,” said Bill defensively. “She’s lovely, I quite like her. And anyways, she’s only half-veela, I’ve told you -”

“Half a veela is plenty enough to mix you up in the head,” Mad-Eye growled, tapping his temple knowingly.

“Don‘t worry Bill, it isn’t like you’re the only one who fancies half-breeds,” said Tonks, winking at Sirius. “Isn’t that right, Sirius?”

“I dunno what you mean,” said Sirius, examining his fingernails.

“Oh come off it, you prat!” Tonks said, laughing. “Bit hard to ignore you making googly eyes at one another all the time, isn’t it?”

“What’s all this, then?” said Mr. Weasley, looking from Tonks to Sirius.

Sirius took a massive gulp of ale, swallowed, and set his mug down, saying nothing.

“Go on, Padfoot,” said Lupin, nudging Sirius and grinning at him. “No sense being shy about it . . .”

“Blimey, I didn’t really want to have this conversation yet,” Sirius muttered, rubbing his forehead and looking at Remus smirkingly.

“Shy?” Mrs. Weasley asked, looking between them curiously. “What’s he on about, Sirius?”

“They’re talking about . . . Well, Rane,” said Sirius, feeling uncharacteristically bashful despite being halfway through his fourth beer.

“Rane? Well, what about her? Are you . . .” Mrs. Weasley suddenly gasped, both her hands flying to her mouth. She stared at Sirius over her fingertips, her eyes wide.  
Sirius was nodding slowly.

“ _You and Rane_?!” she breathed from behind her hands.

Sirius nodded some more. Mr. Weasley and Bill were laughing.

“You mean, you couldn’t tell?” said Tonks, laughing as well. “The way they stare at each other whenever they’re in the same room? Oh, it‘s _revolting_ . . .!”

“Well, I for one had no idea,” said Mr. Weasley, looking quite surprised. “I never thought - _Rane_ . . . goodness,” he said at last.

“Dunno _how_ you missed it,” said Bill, rolling his eyes. “They’ve been on about one another for months now -”

Sirius spluttered at this injustice. “Months? It hasn’t been _months_ -!”

“Oh, and what about you trying to pick her up every time she’s been at headquarters since she was inducted?” said Tonks, her eyebrows high. “And she’s worse, she can hardly keep herself together around you -!”

“And how about you bringing her up every fifteen minutes?” Remus added, grinning at Sirius. “We can hardly get through a conversation anymore without you mentioning her -”

“Blimey, we’re not _engaged_ or anything, we’ve just been . . . Y’know, spending a bit more time together lately,” said Sirius, exasperated. “Come off it, you lot . . .”

“For how long?” Bill asked.

Sirius shrugged. “Dunno . . . A week or two? Maybe?”

“Well, at least it’s finally out in the open,” said Remus, sitting back.

“So, what exactly do you call this, Sirius?” Tonks asked him.

“I call it a cluster fuck,” said Sirius loftily, sipping his ale.

“Oh, come off it, you know what I mean,” said Tonks, rolling her eyes. “Do you love her?”

Sirius pondered this for a long moment. The honest answer, beyond hesitation, was yes. He’d fallen for her; there could be no question about it. Before he could give an answer, however, Mad-Eye interrupted.

“Hang on,” said Mad-Eye, looking suspiciously between Lupin and Sirius. “Who’re you talking about, now?”

“Rane,” said Lupin, “the Auror.”

“Five-nine, dark hair, long legs, mad pretty,” said Bill, ticking off on his fingers.

 _“Mad_ pretty,” Mr. Weasley agreed quietly. Mrs. Weasley swatted at him.

“Half-Elf,” Tonks added. “On her dad’s side.”

“Wade’s daughter?” said Mad-Eye, looking astonished.

Sirius and Lupin nodded.

Mad-Eye slammed his mug of beer down so hard Mrs. Weasley gave a startled squeak.

“Fudge fired her!” he said loudly. “Just a few days back! That right?”

“Yes, that’s the one,” said Lupin.

Mad-Eye surprised them all by throwing his head back and roaring laughter. Sirius looked from Lupin to Mr. Weasley, who were both looking as bewildered as him.

“Sirius,” said Mad-Eye, wiping at his normal eye. “She’s _way_ out of your league! Give it a rest!”

“Out of my league?” Sirius said, giving Mad-Eye an affronted look. “Look, just because I’m a convict, mate, doesn’t mean -”

“Have you _seen_ that girl? She’s not interested. Trust me . . .”

“Oh, she’s interested,” said Lupin.

Sirius looked at him in surprise. “How do you know?”

“I know,” Lupin replied mysteriously.

“Remus, I’m telling you, _no one_ knows the mind of a woman,” said Bill sagely, gesturing at Lupin with his beer.

“Trust me,” said Lupin.

“Remus, what on earth makes you say that?” asked Mrs. Weasley. Her voice had taken on just a tad of a slur.

“Well, for a start, I saw the two of them kissing on the veranda a few weekends ago,” said Lupin wryly.

There was a shocked silence at this, broken only when Tonks belched loudly. Then, as if on cue, there was an instant uproar.

“You saw them doing _what!?”_

“Sirius, you really _are_ a dog -!”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing, right under our noses -!”

“What were you doing on the veranda in the wee hours of the morning, Sirius Black?” Mrs. Weasley said loudly, giving Sirius a scathing look. “I don’t suppose you were smoking, were you . . .?”

Sirius cast her an injured look. “Me?”

“He was totally smoking,” said an amused voice.

The lot of them turned to find Rane leaning against the doorway, shaking the rain out of her long hair. The awkward silence that greeted her sudden arrival was almost comically abrupt.

“Oh - Rane - what a surprise!” said Mr. Weasley, standing and offering Rane a mug. “Come in, come in, join us!”

“Cheers,” said Rane, taking the mug and looking around at them curiously. She stared from face to face, a bemused grin playing about her mouth. “Are you guys drunk?”

“Nooo,” said Lupin, shaking his head.

“’Course - _hic_ \- not,” said Tonks, giggling.

“I am,” said Mad-Eye, and burst out laughing. Rane couldn’t help but laugh herself.

Sirius, meanwhile, had pointed his wand at Rane’s mug and muttered the spell he’d used earlier; it was instantly full of ale.

“Alright, Rane?” he asked, looking at her.

Rane nodded, returning his gaze, feeling the familiar tickle in her belly at the sight of him. “Great, yeah.”

“Come have a sit,” Sirius said.

“Room over there?”

Sirius moved a few inches over obligingly. Rane shook off her cloak and took the spot next to him, reaching over and squeezing his thigh at once.

“You look lovely,” said Sirius, looking over at her.

“So do you,” Rane replied, unable to suppress a smile.

She was suddenly, acutely aware that the entire rest of the table were watching this exchange alertly. She turned, looking at them, bemused.

“What?” she said blankly.

“Oh, you two are vile,” said Bill, rolling his eyes.

“We - what? Vile?” Rane looked at him in bewilderment. “What d’you mean?”

“No sense beating around the bush about it,” said Mad-Eye, fixing his good eye on Rane. “We know you two’ve fallen madly in love with each other and have taken to sneaking about snogging whilst no one’s looking.”

Rane flushed crimson. She looked from Mad-Eye to Mrs. Weasley to Lupin, all of whom looked amused. Finally she turned to look at Sirius, who was hiding his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking gently with laughter.

“Oh, fuck,” she said, and took an enormous gulp of beer.


	5. Arthur's Plight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Arthur Weasley is injured on Order duty and Sirius and Rane cope with a slew of worried teenagers (and themselves)

 

“SIRIUS! Sirius Black!”

Sirius Black didn’t hear his name being called right away. He was lying on the sofa on the ground floor in a very empty Grimmauld Place, stretched out on his back, one arm behind his head, a worked-over bottle of firewhiskey opened on the table beside him. It was quite late - well past midnight - but the hour found him still in his day clothes, notably unshaven and quite dejected. A half-empty glass was balanced on his chest.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been left to his own devices since that September, when he’d escorted Harry and the rest of them to King’s Cross. Indeed, the numerous members of the Order of the Phoenix were constantly coming and going, leaving him with only his hippogriff, Buckbeak, for company (and Kreacher, of course, but who in their right mind wanted _his_ company . . .). And though he didn’t necessarily like solitude, it did come naturally to him after so many years in Azkaban, followed by his career as a convict. Indeed, it wasn’t a desire for the company of the general populace he craved; it was the company of one particular person. Someone he hadn’t seen in almost a month.

Rane had been absent for quite some time. Though he didn’t know it (indeed, no one except Rane and Dumbledore did), she had been in America on Dumbledore’s orders, acting as an envoy to the Elves there, and this undertaking had kept her out of the country for the entirety of November. Sirius had not heard from her even once, and he found her absence daunting.  
Had she taken a powder on him? Met someone else? He pondered this bleakly, sipping on his firewhiskey, his brow furrowed. He was more cognizant than ever that he was trapped in Grimmauld Place these days, unable to pursue any semblance of a normal life; a girl like Rane needed someone who had that capacity, didn’t she? Wasn’t it only natural that she would seek that? And in any case, she was . . . Well . . .

Sirius shifted uncomfortably, the ice in his glass clinking. Rane was a catch; no one could deny it. She was young, clever, free, talented, and in possession of a kind of impossible beauty that no mortal woman could begin to rival. It should have come as no surprise that she would have become disenchanted with him, really. He didn’t have anything to offer a girl like her - that was perfectly clear to him now as he lay on the sofa, the glass on his chest rocking gently with his breath. What had he been thinking, anyway?  
She wouldn‘t have done, Sirius thought, and rubbed his face in frustration. Easily said, wasn’t it? Here he was, his confidence waning alarmingly, on week four of not having heard so much as a word from her. And the worst part was the pining he felt for her, the almost physical homesickness for her presence, the way his thoughts seemed to always come full circle back to her. He hadn’t felt like this in ages, not since well before Azkaban. And the weirdest part, the bit that really baffled him? It had happened so _quickly,_ so suddenly. He had met her through the Order, and like any man would be he was taken with her - her beauty, her brilliance, the whole package - but then he had suddenly found himself experiencing an entirely new sensation, some bright ember-glow of emotion that he at first refused to acknowledge for what it was. And then they had spent the night together, and it had seemed that -

 _“Sirius_ . . .!”

Sirius cocked his head, listening. He thought he’d heard . . . But no, Phineas wouldn’t be awake at this hour . . .

“ _Sirius Black_!”

Sirius sat up, catching his glass before it could tumble to the floor. Yes, that was definitely Phineas, no doubt about it. He stood up, wobbling a little, and strode towards the stairway.

“Phineas?” he called as he thundered up the staircase, holding the railing. “What is it?”

He reached the landing and opened the door to the room Harry and Ron had shared over the summer, casting a somewhat wistful look at the empty beds as he went to Phineas Nigellus’s portrait.

“Oh, _there_ you are,” said the empty portrait that hung on the wall, sounding bored. “I thought for a moment you might be passed out in a drunken stupor someplace . . .”

“Lovely,” Sirius murmured. “What do you need? It’s quite late . . .”

“Well, there’s no need to be rude,” said the portrait haughtily. “Really, I’m only tying to help -”

“What is it, Phineas?” Sirius said loudly, feeling a flash of irritation. 

The portrait issued a little snort. “Temperamental, are we? Very well . . . A message from Dumbledore. You are to be informed that Arthur Weasley has been gravely injured, and his wife, his children and Harry Potter will be arriving shortly.”

“Arthur’s been hurt?” Sirius said, alarmed. “What - is he -?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the portrait smoothly. “Now, I must be getting along, if there’s nothing else . . .”

“Right - right, well tell Dumbledore I’d be delighted to have them,” said Sirius. “And if there’s any news, be sure to . . .”

But Phineas had already gone. Sirius stood looking at the blank canvas for a moment, then swept back towards the door, his mind whirling.

He had not even reached the landing when there was a loud crash in the basement kitchen; Sirius heard what sounded like something large and metal clanging to the ground. Kreacher was creeping near the doorway, his back to Sirius, peering into the gloomy kitchen.

“Back again, the blood traitor brats, is it true their father’s dying . . .?” Kreacher was mumbling.

“OUT!” Sirius bellowed, and aimed a kick at Kreacher as he strode towards the kitchen. Kreacher cringed against the blow and then slunk quickly away, staring malevolently over his shoulder at Sirius.

In the kitchen, Sirius found Harry Potter, Ginny, Ron, Fred and George Weasley. They were all in a tangled heap on the floor; a little ways off, gleaming benignly in the dim candlelight, was an unfamiliar kettle that Sirius had no doubt was a Portkey, probably enchanted by Dumbledore.

“What’s going on?” he said, offering a hand to Ginny. “Phineas Nigellus says Arthur’s been badly hurt!”

“Ask Harry,” said Fred.

“Yeah, I want to hear this for myself,” George agreed.

Sirius turned his eyes on Harry, who looked pale and anxious. Harry opened his mouth, but before he could speak there was a loud knock at the front door.

“Who’s that?” Ron asked, looking uneasy. “D’you reckon Dumbledore -?”

“No,” said Sirius. “Can’t be. Must be Remus . . .”

“I’ll get it,” said Ginny, brushing past Sirius and striding to the door.

“Are you alright?” Sirius asked Harry in a low voice. “You look bad -”

“Well I’m not good,” Harry said waspishly.

“Hullo Rane,” said Ron distractedly, looking over Sirius’s shoulder.

Sirius whirled about. Rane was striding into the room, wearing a rain-soaked riding cloak, her long dark hair glistening with moisture. As she came into the kitchen, she flung back her hood, throwing her face into chiseled contrast against the candlelight, and for a moment her profound beauty seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Sirius was so astounded to see her there that for a few seconds he only stared at her, his mouth slightly open.

“Dumbledore wouldn’t say what happened to Arthur,” said Rane, looking around at all of them. “Is he alright?”

“Dunno,” said Ginny nervously.

“Harry was just about to fill us in,” said Fred, looking at Harry expectantly.

Harry looked around at all of them, looking uncertain.

“I - I had a sort of - of vision thing,” he said haltingly. “It was - I saw Ron’s dad, he was in this giant room full of weird shiny things, and there was a massive snake, and I - er, the snake attacked him . . . And, well, that was it,” he finished uncertainly.

“A vision,” she said, nonplussed. “Of a . . . a _snake?”_

“I know how it sounds,” Harry said, casting her an impatient look. “Look, I know, okay? He’s hurt. Dumbledore and McGonagall believed me, so why won’t you lot?”

“This has happened before,” said Sirius, looking at her. “Right every time so far.”

Rane shook her head. She knew about Harry, of course - who didn’t? - but this aspect of his personality was new to her. She’d only known him since that summer, which they’d spent together at Grimmauld Place.

“Okay, okay,” she said simply.  She trusted both Dumbledore and Harry enough to go along with this; much besides, it seemed more pressing issues were at hand.

Fred, George, Ginny and Ron were all still staring at Harry, all of them whey-faced and silent. Sirius wasn’t sure, but he thought there was something accusatory in their faces; Harry, it seemed, must have noticed it too, because he was determinedly looking at his shoes.

“Is mum here?” asked Fred, looking at Sirius at last.

“She probably doesn’t even know what happened yet,” said Sirius. “The important thing was to get you away before Umbridge could interfere. I expect Dumbledore is letting Molly know now.”

“We’ve got to go to St. Mungo’s,” said Ginny desperately. “Sirius, can you lend us some cloaks or something -?”

“Hang on, you can’t go tearing off to St. Mungo’s!” said Sirius.

“’Course we can,” said Fred, looking surprised. “He’s our dad.”

“And how are you going to explain how you knew Arthur was attacked before the hospital even let his wife know?” Sirius demanded.

“What does that matter?” George said angrily.

“It matters because we don’t want to draw attention to the fact that Harry is having visions of things that are happening hundreds of miles away!” Sirius retorted hotly. “Have you got any idea what the Ministry would make of that information?”

Fred and George were glaring at Sirius; Ron was still pale and silent.

“Someone else could have told us,” said Ginny haltingly. “We could have heard it from someone other than Harry . . .”

“Like who?” said Sirius impatiently. “Listen, your dad’s been hurt while on duty for the Order, the circumstances are fishy enough without his children knowing about it seconds after it’s happened, you could seriously damage the Order’s -”

“We don’t care about the dumb Order!” Fred shouted.

“It’s our dad dying we’re talking about!” George yelled.

“Your father knew what he was getting into, and he won’t thank you for messing things up for the Order!” said Sirius angrily in his turn. “This is how it is — this is why you’re not in the Order — you don’t understand — there are things worth dying for!”

“Easy for you to say, stuck here!” bellowed Fred. “I don’t see you risking your neck!”

“Okay, everyone needs to calm down,” Rane said loudly, taking a step forward and placing a hand lightly on Sirius’s back. He had gone very pale and for an alarming moment she was almost certain he was going to abandon all pretense and hit Fred. “Listen, I know you guys are worried about your dad, but we have to stay here and wait. Going to St. Mungo’s won’t help and it might make things way worse. It’s not going to do anyone any good to get Arthur or Dumbledore or anybody else in trouble -”

“We don‘t care if Dumbledore gets in trouble!” Fred said loudly, glaring at her.

“We don’t _have_ to do anything, we’re of age!” George agreed.

“Which is why you need to do the responsible thing,” said Rane steadily, “and go sit down and chill out until we find out what’s going on.”

Fred and George stood glaring at Rane and Sirius, looking mutinous. Ginny, however, took a seat on the chair nearest the fire, and Ron made a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a nod and planted himself on the sofa. The twins continued to glare at Rane and Sirius for a moment, then they sat beside Ginny at last.

“That’s right,” said Sirius encouragingly. “Come on, let’s all . . . Let’s all have a drink while we wait. _Accio Butterbeer_!”

Several bottles of Butterbeer came soaring out of the pantry and skidded to a halt on the table. Rane noticed with a slightly furrowed brow the scant remains of a solitary meal, a mostly empty glass and a bottle of half-finished firewhiskey. Harry was sitting opposite Ron, looking vastly uncomfortable.

“Can I have a word?” Sirius said to her quietly. “In the kitchen?”

Rane followed him into the kitchen, unzipping the hoody she had worn beneath her cloak and removing it in spite of the chill within the house itself. She hopped nimbly onto the countertop, her legs crossed, looking at Sirius. He stood in the unforgiving light of the kitchen, and for the first time since she’d arrived she was able to get a really good look at him. He looked less than vital this evening; despite the hour, he was still clad in jeans, and he looked as though he hadn’t shaven in some time. His long black hair had taken on a distinctly matted appearance.

“Look, what do you know about all of this?” Sirius asked her. “What did Dumbledore tell you?”

“Nothing, really,” she said, shaking her head. “He said Arthur had been hurt pretty bad while he was on duty, that he’d sent Harry and the Weasleys here to stay with you . . .” She leaned forward slightly, dropping her voice. “Sirius, listen, do you know where Arthur was stationed tonight?”  
Sirius nodded grimly.

“How are we going to explain what he was doing there?” said Rane, still hushed. “Even Aurors aren’t allowed to be on that floor without a pretty damn good reason -”

“Dumbledore’ll get it sorted,” said Sirius. He began to pace back and forth, his hands deep in his pockets. “I just wish someone would tell us something, his kids are worried half to death . . .”

“Molly will be wherever he is by now,” said Rane. “She’ll tell us what’s up as soon as she can, I’m sure she will.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Sirius shot at her, sounding suddenly sharp.

Rane blinked. “I . . . well, Dumbledore told me to -”

“So that’s it then, you just show up here on Dumbledore’s orders after a month?” Sirius asked her, his voice rising a notch. “After not hearing a word from you?”

Rane stared at Sirius. He stared back at her angrily. All his woe, all his heartsickness for her that had been accumulating over the past month was welling up in a sudden wave. He could feel his heart beating much too fast beneath his ribs; he wished bitterly for his glass of firewhiskey. Make it a double, in fact.

“I was on duty. Dumbledore sent me to the Elves in America. As a diplomat.”

“No one’s seen you or heard from you since Halloween,” said Sirius.

“You don’t have to yell -”

“I’M NOT YELLING!” Sirius shouted. In the living room, the quiet conversation among the Weasleys and Harry halted abruptly.

“The only people that knew where I went were Dumbledore and me,” said Rane. She was trying very hard not to let the hurt she felt at seeing Sirius angry with her show in her face. “He didn’t want anyone to know, Sirius, I didn’t have a choice.”

“No one?” said Sirius heatedly. “Not even me?”

Rane opened her mouth and then closed it. She hopped down from the counter lightly and stood there, her hands still on the edge, looking at him.

“I wanted to tell you,” said Rane quietly. “I just . . . I couldn’t -”

“You know, is _that_ it?” Sirius went on. Now that he was in his stride, he couldn’t have stopped himself from airing all of the pain he’d felt over Rane this past month even if he’d wanted to. Even the wounded expression on her face didn’t discourage him.

“Sirius, come on -”

“Is that what this is? I don’t mean anything to you? You didn’t care about telling me you’d be away for weeks at a time because I don’t matter? Is _that_ it?”

“No!”

“You think I’ve had it easy here, stuck at headquarters with Buckbeak and Kreacher, just - just hoping you’d turn up?!” Sirius went on, glaring at her. “D’you have any idea what I’ve been doing? Wondering where you’d gone to, if you’d just decided to never speak to me again? Thinking you’d _lied_ to me -!”

“HEY!” Rane shouted.

Sirius’s mouth snapped shut at once, taken aback by the wrath in her voice. Rane stood before him, her face hard and her eyes blazing, looking as angry as he’d ever seen her.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice now deadly quiet, “don’t accuse me of lying to you. I never once lied to you.”

Sirius gaped at her, silent.

“I wanted to tell you where I was going,” Rane went on. “I wanted to write you _every day_ while I was gone. But Dumbledore said I wasn’t to contact anyone. Specifically, I wasn’t to contact you.”

“Why me?” Sirius spluttered.

“Why do you think?” Rane replied evenly.

"Dumbledore wasn't even here when -!"

"Look, this is Dumbledore we're talking about," Rane interrupted him. "The dude probably knows what color underwear you've got on at any given time. Don't act all surprised."

A moment of silence fell between them, both of them staring at each other, breathing hard. Rane stared at him, saying nothing. Several seconds passed between them, the silence broken only by the crackle of the fire in the livingroom.

“Sirius, I care about you,” said Rane in just more than a whisper. Her eyes were very bright in the dim kitchen. “I . . . I care about you a lot. Okay? And that’s not . . . Not easy for me to admit. Alright?”

Sirius said nothing. He continued to look at her, breathing quickly.

“Well, Jesus, say _something,”_ said Rane in earnest, looking devastated.

“D’you reckon I’d be shouting if I didn’t care about you too?” said Sirius quietly.

Before he could say anything else, Rane was crossing the kitchen quickly towards him, and he had a moment to wonder if she was going to hit him before she grasped his face in her hands and pressed her mouth hard into his. And then he was tasting her after such a long time, and all the emotion he had harnessed inside of himself came out in a rush. He pulled her closer to him, holding her tight, relishing the warmth of her lips, the smell of her hair, the heat of her breath.

“Come on,” Rane said, breaking apart from him. “Enough of this shit, we should be worrying about the Weasleys right now, not our . . . Our dumb little . . . ”

She gestured vaguely between the two of them with her hands. Sirius nodded, feeling a bit shaky as he followed her out into the living room. He wasn’t quite prepared to admit how badly their conversation had affected him.

Ginny was curled on a chair like a cat, her eyes wide open, the firelight reflected within them. Fred and George were sitting bolt upright on the sofa, both of them clearly trying very hard to stay awake. Harry’s glasses were alight with the firelight as he sat in the silence, looking positively miserable.

Rane sat on the loveseat opposite Fred and George, and Sirius surprised her by sitting beside her. She glanced at him in surprise, but he wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at Harry, who seemed not to have even noticed them coming in.

“Everything alright?” Ginny asked Sirius, craning her neck to look at him. “We heard you shouting . . .”

“Everything’s good,” said Sirius. “You lot okay?”

“Never better,” muttered Fred. Beside him, George’s head was drooping onto his shoulder; a moment later it snapped back up and he stared around him wearily.

A flash of fire suddenly erupted in the center of the room, and Sirius leapt to his feet at once. A single, vibrant plume was floating down from where the flash of flame had been, along with a scroll of parchment.

“Fawkes!” Sirius said, snatching the parchment up quickly. “This isn’t Dumbledore’s handwriting - it must be from Molly -”

Fred grabbed the parchment at once and tore it open, reading it aloud: “ _Dad is still alive. I am setting out for St. Mungo’s now. Stay where you are. I will send news as soon as I can. Mum._ ”

George looked around at all of them.

“’Still alive,’” he murmured. “But that makes it sound . . .”

A very bleak moment passed between them. Ron, his face ashen, was staring at the letter as if hoping it might speak words of comfort to him. George snatched the letter from Fred’s hand and read it himself. Harry, who was holding his Butterbeer in a trembling hand, watched this all unfold with something like dread.

“St. Mungo’s is great,” Rane said, trying to sound bracing. “They’ll take good care of your dad . . .”

No one responded. Rane fell silent.

 

THE night wore on. No one said much . . . It was clear the Weasleys were miserable with anxiety, and Harry, much like Rane and Sirius, was plainly feeling like an intruder on their grief.  Twice, as Rane watched him sipping his Butterbeer, his hands were shaking so badly that he slopped it all over the table, something no one took the slightest notice of.

Sirius suggested once, without any real conviction, that they all ought to go to bed; the Weasleys’ disgust was answer enough. The candle on the table burned on, the wax melting around the wick. Kreacher did not show up to tend the fire, which Rane got up a few times to stoke herself, feeling the chill of Grimmauld Place creeping in.

Fred and George did not last much longer; both of them were dozing, their heads on their shoulders, before too much longer, exhausted no doubt by both their worry and the lateness of the hour. Ginny remained curled on her chair, blinking in the firelight.

At some point, as the clock in the hallway ticked loudly, Sirius reached out, quite unabashed, and took her hand, pulled it into his lap, and wrapped it in both of his. Rane looked at this display, bewildered, then up at him. He was looking back down at her As she stared up at him, he leaned over and placed a kiss in the center of her forehead.

Harry, who was still sitting by the fire, was watching them. He looked exhausted, his chin in his hand, his hair mussier than ever. He met Rane’s eyes and surprised her by offering her a wan smile. She smiled back at him, feeling a combination of exhaustion and relief. He hadn’t leapt up and begun shouting at her . . . That was a good sign, wasn’t it . . .?  
Rane had allowed her eyes to slip shut, her head resting on Sirius’s shoulder, when the door banged open at ten past five by Ron’s watch. Everyone leapt to their feet at once. Molly Weasley, looking haggard, was walking into the room. She looked pale and exhausted, but she gave them all a small smile.

“He’s going to be alright,” she said. “He’s sleeping, we can all go and visit him in a while. Bill’s sitting with him now, he’s going to take the morning off work.”

Fred fell back into his chair with his hands over his face. George and Ginny got up, walked swiftly over to their mother, and hugged her. Ron gave a very shaky laugh and downed the rest of his butterbeer in one.

“Thank you for looking after them,” Molly said, looking at Sirius and Rane. “Both of you.”

“Shit, anybody woulda,” Rane said, surprised. “Are you okay?”

Molly sighed deeply. She was taking her traveling cloak off one arm at a time, as if even the slightest motions were taxing. “I’m just happy he’s not . . . Well . . . Well, he was very lucky,” she finished. “We all were.”

“Breakfast!” said Sirius loudly, looking positively joyous. “Where is that accursed house elf . . . Kreacher! KREACHER!”

Kreacher didn’t appear, however. Sirius sighed, and looked around at the group before him.

“Oh, forget it, then,” he said, counting the heads. “Let’s see, breakfast for eight - bacon and eggs, I think, and some toast and tea . . . Will you stay, Rane?”

Rane looked at Sirius, weary and relieved. He was standing there before the fire, his eyes lively, looking impossibly handsome, the orange firelight brimming around him, his mouth curved into a smile.

“I love you,” she said. She had said it, loudly, before she had even realized she was going to.

An abrupt silence fell in the room. Fred, George, Ginny and Harry all looked around at her in complete surprise. Molly, her cloak folded over one arm, looked around at Rane as well.

Sirius’s smile was fading slowly. He remained where he was, staring at her.

“You do?” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” said Rane. “Yeah, I do.”

Rane had never seen the expression she now saw on Sirius’s face before. It was more than elation; it was respite, liberated, mingled with pure happiness. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were dancing.

“I love you too,” he said, barely more than a whisper.

She went to him, and Sirius sighed roughly and pulled her to him, embracing her tightly, burying his face in her fragrant hair. Rane remained in his arms, motionless, fighting very hard against a flurry of tears that wanted to wash down her cheeks and into the rough material of Sirius’s shirt. It had taken more courage that Sirius would have believed for her to say what she’d just said to him, and she was horribly afraid.

“Well, it’s about time!” Molly said, sounding happy in spite of herself. “Bravo!”

“Think we’re a bit out of the loop, are we?” Ginny said, sounding amused.

Rane squeezed her eyes shut and pulled away from Sirius, looking up at him. His own eyes were bright, too. He was beaming at her now, his grin impossibly brilliant, in contrast to his swimming eyes.

“A bit yeah,” he said, and swiped surreptitiously at his eyes.

“We can hear the whole story over breakfast, can’t we?” said Ron. “I’m starving, we’ve been up all bloody night . . .”

 


	6. Questions, Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which awkward queries are made and hilarious answers ensue

Rane had not ever seen Sirius in such a good mood, not even the morning after their first night together. It was not, she felt certain, only her brash proclamation before the rest of them that had achieved this, however; Molly had asked Sirius if he would mind if they remained at Grimmauld Place, which was far closer to St. Mungo’s than the Burrow, for the duration of Christmas. Sirius’s answer - The more the merrier! - had been full of such obvious sincerity and good cheer that Molly had thrown on an apron and helped him with breakfast.

As the good smells of bacon and eggs wafted in from the kitchen, Rane sat with Ron, Fred, George and Ginny who, now that the immediacy of their father’s danger had passed, were all quite keen to get the details on Sirius’s affiliation with her.

“Why didn’t you or Sirius ever tell any of _us?”_ Ginny was asking, looking affronted. “We were here all summer, we saw you loads of times . . .”

“Well . . . Well, it wasn’t _all_ summer, we didn’t . . . we didn’t, um . . .” Rane struggled with the apposite jargon, not wanting to blurt out what her traitorous mind was insisting upon, which was _fuck._ “We didn't do anything - not _do_ anything, I mean, just - no one made a move until late in the summer. August, I think it was . . .”

Oh, this was weird. Rane was presently sitting Indian-style on the floor in front of the sofa beside the embers of the fire, feeling absolutely out of her element. She had never had occasion to explain to a flock of teenagers the circumstances that led up to her romantic relationship with someone (all the while very carefully avoiding the word _sex_ and all of its affiliates, of course). She didn’t think Molly would thank her for delving into the lewd minutiae of how it had all really started, so she was trying her damndest to paint a hideously chaste picture for them.

The room was a tad nippy now that the fire had burnt itself out, but Molly had opened a shade near the top of the stairs and the morning light outside was streaming in, giving Grimmauld Place an almost cheery feel. To Rane’s further delight, sometime between her arrival and Molly’s, the rain had turned to snow, and the London streets were white with it already. The fluffy white coating on the ledge outside the window Molly had opened made her appreciate for the first time how near Christmas was.

“Okay, so tell it to us again,” said Fred, twirling a finger in the air, “because it’s not quite adding up yet. You couldn’t sleep, so you walked outside, and Sirius was…” He cast a furtive look over his shoulder, then added in a conspiratorial whisper, “ _smoking a cigarette_ . . . How did mum like that, by the way?”

“Bet she was ecstatic,” said George, snickering.

“I dunno whether she was or not, to be honest,” Rane said. “When she finally found out, the subject changed pretty much right away, and she was kind of drunk anyway, so . . .”

“Bloody hell, I never knew mum got _drunk,”_ said Ron, looking impressed and glancing towards the kitchen, where Sirius and Molly could be heard talking, both of them sounding positively jolly. “Most I’ve seen her do is a champagne at Christmas . . .”

“Don’t forget when Aunt Muriel comes to visit,” said Ginny, making a face.

“Trust me, that woman can put ‘em down,” said Rane, thinking of Molly keening delightedly about she and Sirius over her third or fourth beer and giggling with Arthur.

“Anyways, stay on topic,” Fred said smartly. “You met out on the veranda -”

“Yeah,” said Rane. “You guys were all asleep, and we just . . . Well, we just talked for a while. And then we . . . Well . . . Well, we kind of . . . made out, a little,” Rane finished in a rush, feeling her cheeks burning.

“A little?” said Ginny, her eyebrows high. “How do you make out a _little?”_

“Just - we - shit, I dunno, what do you want from me?” Rane stammered.

“Look, no one makes out a _little,”_ Ginny went on sagely. “Like . . . You either do or you don’t, right?”

“Wait a minute, how do _you_ know?” said Ron suspiciously.

“Because I’m not eight, Ronald,” Ginny told him, looking quite unashamed.

“Okay, okay,” said Rane, flapping her hands. “Okay, anyways. So . . . So we made out. A little.”

“And?” said George and Fred together.

“And that was it!” Rane replied, inspecting her fingernails.

“Oh, come _off_ it!” said Fred, slapping his thigh and looking highly amused. George was laughing openly beside him. “You really expect us to believe you just kissed him and that was that?”

“Yeah, what do we look like?” George agreed, shaking his head.

“Come on, you guys,” said Rane, laughing in spite of herself. “We're not _depraved,_ for the love of god . . .”

“Look,” said Fred, leaning over as if preparing to explain something complex to a layman, “here’s the thing: we’re all fully aware that for a long bloody time now, Sirius has been . . . Oh, how would you put it, George?”

“Virtuous,” said George, nodding.

_“George!”_

“Virtuous, yes,“ Fred went on as if Rane hadn’t spoken, “what with Azkaban, and then being on the run for two or three years there, and now stuck here in Grimmauld Place . . .”

“Dunno about when he was on the run, though, do we?” said Ron thoughtfully.

“Fair point,” said George, and raised his voice to a shout. “Oy! Sirius!”

“Oy what?” Sirius called from the adjacent room.

“Did you leg anyone over when you were on the run?”

What sounded like a large pan and several pieces of cutlery clanged loudly to the floor in the kitchen, followed by the unmistakable sound of Sirius bursting into laughter.

“GEORGE WEASLEY!” Molly shrieked.

“I think it's safe to assume that's a no, then,” said George with an air of having finished a piece of important business.

Molly came into the livingroom, holding a kettle in one hand and a flagon of Butterbeer in the other, a towel thrown over her shoulder. Rane, Fred, Ginny and Ron were all doubled over with laughter.

“What on _earth_ has gotten into you?” she said sharply, looking appalled. “Asking Sirius whether he’d . . . positively _vulgar_ . . . really, George, what are you lot in here talking about that would cause such a -?”

“We were just asking Rane about how she and Sirius started it up,” said Fred, wiping at his streaming eyes.

“Oh, would you just leave her be!” Molly snapped at him. “It’s none of your never mind what she and Sirius get up to when you’re not around!”

“So are you going to marry him or what?” Ginny asked as Molly went back into the kitchen.

“Marry him?” Rane said, and snorted. “I don’t know, Ginny, seriously - I mean, we don’t . . . we’ve never talked about . . .”

She cleared her throat, took a steadying breath, and finished a bit more calmly.

“I dunno,” she said. “I don’t think we’re there yet, you know?”

“What does Harry think?” Ron asked suddenly. “Where is he, anyway?”

While the rest of them were in the livingroom grilling Rane, Harry was in the kitchen, attempting to help Sirius and Molly with breakfast. In truth, he was so full of anxiety over Arthur’s attack and the part he had played in it that he was quite immune to Sirius’s and Molly’s good cheer. And now, compounding it all, was this . . . This _thing_ between Sirius and Rane.

Truth be told, he thought as he pulled plates down from the cupboard and dusted them off with the hem of his sleeve, he wasn’t sure _how_ he felt about it. And the worst part was that he hadn’t seen any of the signs that something was amiss - signs he was certain had been there from the get-go for someone clever enough to notice. Hermione had noticed, after all . . . had it only been September that she had mentioned to Ron and him that she thought there might be something going on between them?

Harry remembered the occasion quite well; there he’d been, with Hermione and Ron at the Gryffindor table for breakfast, poring together over the _Daily Prophet_ for any sign of Voldemort’s activity, as usual. There had been an article that morning about Rane losing her job as an Auror at the Ministry, something about the Wizengamot deciding her being a half-Elf was too risky. The Prophet had spun it to make it sound like she was a bit unhinged and had been spying on Fudge on behalf of the Elves, but Harry found the entire saga felt a bit contrived.

 _Well, I think it’s a load of rubbish_ , he had said heatedly to Hermione and Ron, throwing the paper down in disgust. _Rane’s excellent, she’s not a spy_ -!

 _Not for the Elves, at least_ , Ron said with a scowl, _I reckon Fudge must’ve cottoned onto how close she is to Dumbledore, or something_ . . .

 _Lucky for Fudge he had an excuse to sack her_ , Hermione had said darkly. _I bet he’d love if he could get rid of everyone else in league with Dumbledore so easily_ . . .

 _D’you reckon she’ll keep working for the you-know-what now that she‘s not an Auror anymore_? Ron had said under his breath.

 _I think that even if she didn’t, she’d still keep close to Headquarters_ , said Hermione mysteriously, picking up the Prophet and examining it.

Harry and Ron had exchanged a look.

 _What d’you mean by that_? Harry had asked her, bewildered. _Dumbledore’s bound to have stuff for her to do, Lupin says she’s an envoy for the Elves_ -

 _Oh I don’t think it’s a question of Dumbledore having things for her to do_ , Hermione replied, still in that same lofty tone of voice. _I think she’s got other things keeping her around_.

 _What are you on about_? Ron had asked her, looking mystified.

Hermione had rolled her eyes, folding the newspaper and lying it on the table

 _Oh, isn’t it obvious_? she’d snapped. _Rane’s in love with Snuffles_!

Harry and Ron had stared at her.

 _In love with Snuffles_? Ron had snorted. _No way . . . Hermione, you’re off your rocker_ . . .

 _I’m quite sure of it, actually_ , Hermione had replied mulishly. _And if either of you had paid any attention this summer, you’d agree_!

 _Paid attention to what_? Harry had asked her, baffled.

 _Okay_ , Hermione had said, leaning over towards them. _You know how she was sleeping with Ginny and I in our room_?

Harry and Ron had nodded.

_Remember that morning she said she’d woken up in the middle of the night and then come back to bed?_

Harry and Ron had nodded again.

 _Well, Ginny and I both agree_ , Hermione had said, _that she_ never came back to bed _that night. Neither of us saw her. Both of us woke up first and went downstairs, and then Rane came down_ afterwards.

 _So?_ said Ron, gnawing on a strip of bacon and looking bored.

 _So,_ said Hermione impatiently, _don’t you think it’s a bit_ odd _that she came downstairs after she was supposed to have come back into our room with us? Shouldn’t one of us have seen her?_

 _Blimey,_ Ron said, sitting back _. I never thought about that_ . . .

 _Okay, so what are you suggesting_? said Harry. _That she and Snuffles . . . I dunno, spent the night together or something_?

Exactly, Hermione said, folding her arms on the table. _And when we were at breakfast, Snuffles even mentioned that they’d been on the porch together. And when Ron asked them if they’d snogged, didn’t you see how they reacted?_

 _I wasn’t serious, Hermione, I was just taking the mickey_ , Ron said, lifting his eyebrows at her. _Honestly, I thought you of all people’d have picked up on that_ . . .

 _Okay, well . . . Well, so what_? Harry said, a bit disconcerted. _That doesn’t mean she’s in_ love _with him_ -

 _No,_ Hermione agreed, _but they way they were behaving that morning . . . Not just Snuffles, but both of them . . . I really think something’s going on_.

 _So you think Snuffles is in love with her too, now_? Harry asked skeptically.

 _I dunno_ , Hermione had said pensively, _but . . . Well, think about it. He’s been alone a really long time, and Rane is . . . Well, you’ve seen her, she’s quite pretty_ . . .

 _You’re mad_ , said Ron, cramming the rest of his kipper into his mouth.

 _Yeah, Snuffles . . . I dunno, he wouldn’t . ._ . Harry had begun, casting about for a reason why this couldn’t be. _She’s way too young,_ he’d finished at last, lamely.

 _Suit yourselves_ , Hermione had said, gathering her books and standing up haughtily before sweeping off to Potions. Harry had drawn the discarded Prophet over to him as she hurried off and Ron continued to stuff as much bacon as he could into his mouth before his first lesson began.

 

**Half-Elf Suspected of Espionage and Removed from Auror’s Office at Wizengamot’s Appeal Spotted in New York on Unknown Business**

 

Beneath this rather lurid headline had been a photo of Rane. Harry had examined it, really looking at her for the first time. In the photo, she was sitting half-turned on a barstool in a dark pub, a pint of beer in her hand, blinking against what was presumably a flurry of camera flashes. She was wearing a black dress that stopped at her knee (Harry could not recall ever having seen her in a dress before) and a pair of boots. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck, and as he watched, photo-Rane raised a fist at whoever was doing the picture-taking and gave them the finger, her dark brows knit, looking thoroughly annoyed.

 _She_ is _pretty,_ he had thought, and wondered whether Hermione was as mad as Ron thought she was, after all.

Harry pondered this conversation now, as he stood in Grimmauld Place’s dour basement kitchen, for the first time in months, asking himself how he could have been so stupid. He’d seen the way they’d acted, after all . . .

“I don’t know _what’s_ gotten into him, Sirius,” Molly was saying as she came back into the kitchen, setting the flagon of Butterbeer down, pink-faced. “Of all the mad things those two say, _that_ . . . What on earth . . . !”

“It’s quite alright, Molly,” Sirius replied, a little red around the collar himself. “Don’t worry about the porridge, Kreacher will get it . . .”

“Sirius,” said Harry, unable to stand it any longer, “can I have a quick word? Er - now?”

He walked into the dark pantry and Sirius followed. Without preamble Harry told his godfather every detail of the vision he had had, including the fact that he himself had been the snake who had attacked Mr. Weasley.

When he paused for breath, Sirius said, “Did you tell Dumbledore this?”

“Yes,” said Harry impatiently, “but he didn’t tell me what it meant. Well, he doesn’t tell me anything anymore. . . .”

“I’m sure he would have told you if it was anything to worry about,” said Sirius steadily.

“But that’s not all,” said Harry in a voice only a little above a whisper. “Sirius, I . . . I think I’m going mad. . . . Back in Dumbledore’s office, just before we took the Portkey . . . for a couple of seconds there I thought I was a snake, I felt like one — my scar really hurt when I was looking at Dumbledore — Sirius, I wanted to attack him —”

He could only see a sliver of Sirius’s face; the rest was in darkness.

“It must have been the aftermath of the vision, that’s all,” said Sirius.

“You were still thinking of the dream or whatever it was and —”

“It wasn’t that,” said Harry, shaking his head. “It was like something rose up inside me, like there’s a snake inside me —”

“You need to sleep,” said Sirius firmly. “You’re going to have breakfast and then go upstairs to bed, and then you can go and see Arthur after lunch with the others. You’re in shock, Harry; you’re blaming yourself for something you only witnessed, and it’s lucky you did witness it or Arthur might have died. Just stop worrying. . . .”

He made as if to leave, and Harry mustered his courage hastily.

“Sirius, wait, there’s . . . there’s something else I wanted to . . .”

Sirius paused, turning back to Harry, and now Harry could see enough of his face in the dim light to recognize the expression there for what it was: guilt.

“Look, about Rane -” Harry began.

“Harry, I should have told you about her,” Sirius said, cutting him off quickly. “You must understand though, even I didn’t really understand what was happening, and it’s been . . . Well, it’s been confusing, I’m not good at this, it’s been so long, and she was worried at first that Mad-Eye or someone would find out and she’d lose her job -”

“Look, it’s okay, really,” Harry said quickly, “I’m not upset or anything, I just wanted to tell you . . . I dunno, I like her. She’s cool.”

“Yeah?” Sirius said, sounding almost childishly encouraged. “You think so?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Definitely. I’m really happy for you. And . . . Well, I like her.”

“So you’re . . . you’re alright with her?” Sirius asked tentatively.

“’Course,” said Harry firmly.

Sirius abandoned all pretense and pulled Harry into a hug so abrupt that Harry’s glasses were knocked askew. 

“I was worried,” he said, pulling back, his hands on Harry’s shoulders. “I’ll admit, I was really worried you wouldn’t -”

“’Course I do,” Harry repeated.

Sirius stood looking at him for a moment. The sound of Molly humming and setting the table were audible within the gloom of the pantry.

“Well, I reckon we’d better -”

“Right, right,” Sirius said, and they jostled their way out of the pantry together.

 


	7. Adventures in the Pantry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sirius and Rane are afforded a very brief moment of solitude

Breakfast was a raucous event at Grimmauld Place that morning, despite everyone’s exhaustion. Molly and Sirius had outdone themselves and created a massive repast of toast, bacon, eggs and tea, and above this spread their spirited conversations flew back and forth with jovial giddiness. It seemed that for the Weasleys in particular, the departure of their immediate fears for Arthur had sent them into a veritable buoyancy.

“Mad-Eye and Tonks will be coming by this afternoon after we’ve all had a nap,” Molly was telling them, spreading jam on her toast. She looked more exhausted than any one of them by far; there were dark circles beneath her eyes and her red hair seemed to be trying to fly off in every direction at once, but she was smiling. “St. Mungo’s has Arthur in a lovely room on the first floor, he’ll be delighted to see us once he’s woken up, I’m sure . . . Rane, will you be coming along, do you think?”

“Mum, she probably wants to stay here with Sirius,” Ginny told her mother, as if this should have been evident to everyone.

Rane glanced across the table, where Sirius was beaming down at his plate, his mouth full of egg.

“Yeah, I think I’ll stay behind and let you guys visit him,” she agreed, biting her cheeks to suppress her own smile. “He’s not going to want twenty people in his room anyway, I bet he’s worn out.”

“Oh, of course, of course, I haven’t any doubt,” Molly agreed, nodding. “And Ginny’s right, it’ll give you and Sirius a chance to -”

Fred choked on his tea and George snorted.

“-spend some time alone,” Molly finished, shooting an impatient look at them. “What are you two tittering about?”

“Nothing, mum,” said Fred, biting the insides of his mouth.

“Alone time, yeah that’s excellent, right,” George agreed.

“Oh, give it a rest,” said Ron, rolling his eyes.  Rane threw her toast crust at Fred.

“Harry, aren’t you hungry?” said Sirius, sounding concerned.

Harry was looking at his nearly untouched plate with a troubled expression, moving the yolk of his egg around. He looked up distractedly, as if disturbed from a deep reverie.

“What? Oh, um . . . I’m full,” he said quietly, pushing his plate away.

“Not gonna eat that?” Ron asked thickly, gesturing to Harry’s bacon.

“No, you go on,” Harry replied, getting up. “I’m going to bed . . .”

Sirius watched him shuffle upstairs, his brow furrowed.

“I think I’m going to go, too,” Ginny agreed, yawning hugely.

“We all ought to,” said Molly, looking around at them, notably bleary-eyed. “I’m done in. Do you suppose Kreacher will clean up, Sirius?”

“Well, it’s his job, after all,” Sirius said darkly. “I haven’t seen him since last night, but I’m sure he’ll find his way in here eventually . . .”

There was a scuffle as Fred, George, Ron, Ginny and Molly rose, stretching.

“Rane, you’ll wake me before it gets to be too on, won’t you?” Molly asked Rane, untying her apron and hanging it by the door. “I don’t want to keep Arthur all afternoon.”

“’Course,” said Rane with a smile.

“Oh, thank you, dear,” said Molly, patting her on the shoulder and yawning herself. “You’re a good girl, you know, I’m so delighted you’re with us . . .”

Rane was absurdly touched by this, however embroidered by Molly’s overtiredness it was, and watched her toddle sleepily out of the kitchen behind her children with unfiltered affection.

“Did you hear _that?”_ she said to Sirius musingly. “She said she’s delighted I’m here. Next time you start taking me for granted, you just keep that in mind . . .”

“Reckon she’s been drinking again,” Sirius muttered loftily.

Rane balled up a napkin and flicked it across the table at him, grinning. He was looking over at her, his chin resting on his fist, wearing an expression of admiration that seemed so garishly exaggerated it could only be genuine.

“Oy!” Fred shouted from upstairs.

“OY!” Rane replied loudly.

“Try to keep it down, will you, so the rest of us can sleep?” Fred called down.

“Oh for heaven’s sake, THE BOTH OF YOU, GO TO BED!” Molly’s voice shrieked scathingly from further up the stairs. Sirius had rested his knuckles lightly against his mouth, trying to keep from laughing too loudly.

“What did you tell them, anyway?” he asked Rane, grinning.

“Nothing!” Rane replied, her face red. “They just . . . Deduced. I mean, they didn’t come right out and say, ‘did you guys do it,’ but they came pretty damn close -”

“No, they were too busy asking me who I’d chatted up while I was on the run,” Sirius murmured, clasping his fists together before his mouth. “What brought that on, anyway? I thought Molly was going to have a heart attack right there . . .”

Rane opened her mouth to begin, then snickered and shut it again, pausing.

“They were making a case for your celibacy,” she said after a moment.

“Oh, _were_ they?” said Sirius, looking amused. “Thought I’d spent two years out of Azkaban humping stray dogs or something . . .?”

“Sirius, come on,” Rane said, rolling her eyes and fixing him with a weary smile. “I mean, you have to know how . . . Well, how . . .”

“How what?” Sirius raised his eyebrows at her.

Rane gestured vaguely at Sirius with the hand that her cheek wasn’t resting on. “You’re . . . hot!” she finished at last.

She had expected Sirius to take this accolade with an easy smile, maybe a hint of his usual pomposity, but to her surprise he flushed, looking uncharacteristically diffident.

“And the way Remus tells it, you’ve always been a little bit of a stud, so don't act all bashful,” Rane went on, grinning.

“Blimey,” Sirius said, laughing in an embarrassed way. “He told you that?”

Rane sipped her tea innocently.

“Wait a second,” said Sirius, “did you . . . why were you and Remus talking about -?”

There it was. Rane burst out laughing, burying her face in her arms on the table.

“I had no idea I was such a fascinating topic, _”_ he admonished, looking at her in genuine surprise.

"What can I say?” Rane confessed, looking up at him shamefacedly. "I thought you were cute so I grilled him a couple times. It's not a _crime,_ for crying out loud . . ."

The sound of doors on several floors shutting came to them, followed by a ringing silence broken only by the big grandfather clock ticking loudly on the landing beneath the stairs. The sudden absence of the Weasleys’ (and to a lesser extent, Harry’s) voices struck her as somehow . . . Exhilarating, though she couldn‘t place why.

Rane met Sirius’s eyes; he was looking at her, his fists still clenched before his lips.

“You’ve got to be tired,” she said, finding with amusement that her voice had dropped to just above a whisper of its own accord.

“I am,” he replied, his voice muffled. “Not as much as you’d think, though.”

“Should we put some of this away?”

Sirius shook his head. “Kreacher will get it . . .”

“I haven’t seen hide or tail of him,” Rane mused, getting up anyway and drawing the margarine and jar of preserves towards her.

She had expected Sirius to protest further, but instead he simply continued to sit there, watching her, his arms folded across his thin chest. There was something rather calculating in his gaze.

“Oh, no, it’s fine, I’ve got it, thanks for asking,” Rane said sardonically, winking at him as she snatched up the loaf of bread with a spare finger as well.

Still, Sirius said nothing, nor made any move to get up and lend a hand. Rane spared a last glance over her shoulder at him, and his expression struck her as . . . Well, almost canine. His chin was lowered, his eyes staring out at her from beneath his brows, and a corner of his mouth was turned ever so slightly upwards in a hint of a rather predatory smile.

“You look like you’re thinking about eating me,” she said, eyeing him from over her handful of food.

Sirius’s shoulders moved up and down once, as if in a stifled laugh.

“Do I, now,” he said softly. She saw his gaze travel from her eyes to her lips and back again, quite unabashed.

Something hot and loose bloomed deep in her belly at this sight, and she felt the long muscles in her thighs loosen a little beneath her jeans. She spared one last look at him over her shoulder, then turned and strode into the pantry.  


SIRIUS had been permeated, quite suddenly, with an almost bestial desire for her as they sat at the table together. It had overcome him with shocking speed, as soon as the doors had all shut on their occupants upstairs, leaving them quite alone.

He found himself watching her face closely, at first tracing her features with a lover’s immaculate eye, taking in the minuscule details; her high cheekbones, her dark eyebrows descending upon her bright hazel eyes, staring out at him from beneath sooty lashes, her full lips, the flash of her even teeth behind them as she laughed, the strand of hair that persistently hung across her clear forehead and descended past her chin.

 _She looks like an Elf_ , he though to himself, appreciating this fully for the first time. Except for the hair, of course.

Though he’d seen plenty of photographs in textbooks and the like, Sirius had seen only two Elves in the flesh in his lifetime. He’d spotted the first perusing ingredients at Slug and Jigger’s Apothecary in Knockturn Alley, when he had been about to begin his second year at Hogwarts. He had peered at her around the corner of a shelf, uncharacteristically timid, staring helplessly. There could be no question what she was; she was tall, thin, and beautiful beyond comparison, wearing a glistening green cloak and possessed of sharp cheekbones and long, straight blonde hair that flowed down her back like liquid. Even the way she had moved - with an incandescent grace that seemed catlike - was inhuman. Her icy blue eyes had met his dark ones, and she’d flashed him such a sunny smile that he had flushed crimson and fled.

The other Elf was, of course, Rane’s father, Wade Roth, who was a revered Auror and an ancient Elven warrior as well. He was a member of the Order and Sirius had known him since he had been inducted himself, before Harry was born; he’d remained, in true Elven fashion, an ageless forty-something-looking man, tall, imposing and menacingly agile. He was a gifted Auror and a gifted wizard as well (as far as Sirius knew, he was the only full-blooded Elf that practiced magic, though he suspected the lot of them might have had the capacity for it and simply didn’t bother). Even Mad-Eye maintained a stiff respect for him. He could see Wade’s chiseled features, his slinky poise, in Rane as he looked at her now, and wondered for an uneasy moment what Wade would make of all of this, or if he even -

Presently Rane stood up, allowing him a clear view of her long legs, the curve of her thighs in her jeans, the way her shirt pulled tight against the long, thin arch of her waist, the spill of her dark hair over her shoulder, gleaming benignly in the cool morning light. Sirius’s long thoughts were neatly swept away in the roiling wave of yearning that washed over him at once.  
He remained where he was, perfectly still, watching her, but he could feel an erection so full that it was almost painful pressing suddenly against the fly of his jeans, and his heart was now hammering beneath his shirt so hard he could hear its fanatical motion in each shaky exhalation. She cast a look over her shoulder at him, and as if on cue he felt his heart do a peculiar back-flip in his chest. He drew in a sharp breath, and as she strode off his eyes descended powerlessly past the hem of her shirt to the arc of her ass, and that was it.  
He rose, walking hastily after her.

 

Rane didn’t hear him right away; she was moving the ancient, dust-covered jars aside to find a place to put the jam when he opened the door to the musty pantry behind her. It was the creak of the door that alerted her in the end. As she turned her head, startled, she could see one of his hands grasping the serpent-shaped handle inside, pulling it gently shut behind him so that only a sliver of light permeated the dim.

“What are you -?” she began, but Sirius stopped her mouth with his. She stumbled backwards against the force of him, the plate of butter dropping from her loosening fingers and clattering to the floor. Sirius pressed her so hard against the back wall of the pantry that several jars rattled on their shelves alarmingly.

Rane gasped against him, overcome with the sensation of his body against hers, unable to see anything but the vague outlines of his shoulders in the gloom. His hands went to her face, pulled it to his, kissing her with such a violent need that she moaned in spite of herself, and never mind if someone heard.

“Sirius -” she gasped as he began to move down her neck, nipping her skin gently. She could feel him pressing into her jeans, pulsing and hot; one of her hands went to his belt and pulled hard. “Here?”

“Here,” Sirius growled, breathing directly into her ear, and her skin erupted in gooseflesh at once. “Right now . . .”

Then his hand was reaching down to her jeans, unsnapping the buttons there with a practiced ease, and suddenly he had lifted her up and set her roughly on the ledge behind them, scattering empty jars across the floor beneath them. He yanked her jeans down, flung them unceremoniously aside, and then he’d drawn back for a moment, breathing as hard as if he’d just run a marathon, his hands fumbling with his belt madly.

“What if . . . Kreacher . . .” Rane was panting hoarsely.

“I don’t give a damn,” Sirius whispered roughly, flinging his belt to the side and unzipping his jeans. Her hand found him, long and firm, and she squeezed him hard, drawing him closer, delighting in the smooth, carnal heat pulsing beneath her grip. The moan that escaped him so loud that Rane was sure that someone would hear . . .

“Come - here -”

There was none of his former gentleness this time; he moved against her forcefully, his hands squeezing the firm flesh of her spread thighs, his mouth inches from hers. In one smooth, hard motion he was inside of her, all of him, and her gasp was hoarse with the love of it. As he began to move, his breath coming in hot puffs against her forehead, she stared up into his shadowy face, seeing the barely perceptible glint of his eyes, and then he was kissing her, biting her lip, and she clutched at the wall behind her as he leaned towards her. She could feel his heart pounding desperately beneath his shirt as he began to thrust into her harder, quicker; tendrils of his hair tickled her shoulder, swaying with his motion, and the sound of the jars on the shelves around them jostling to and fro began to grow louder as their movements grew more frantic. 

Rane drew his face down to hers, her hands on his cheeks, touched his .damp forehead with her own, and as she drew close, she stared into his eyes, listening to the ringing of the disturbed glassware around them, the symphony of their moans, giving into the involuntary spasms within her. She felt him slow, saw his eyes slip shut and his face slacken with bliss, just as her orgasm swept her up in its slick, overwhelming embrace, blooming like a flower. As if on cue, an empty jar crashed at last to the ground and shattered, very loud in the small pantry, punctuating their climax.

Sirius stilled, his breath trembling on his lips, his long hair falling over his face in the dark, his grip on her legs tightening, tightening . . . And then loosening at last, setting her down gently on the old wood of the ledge.

And now he stood before her, deep within her still, his hands on the ledge, bent over her, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“Christ,” Rane breathed, her heart racing. _“Christ_ . . .”

“Call me Sirius,” Sirius gasped, panting and grinning down at her.  Rane snorted.

As they stood together, riding high on the glistening descent of one another, catching their breath, there was a loud and unmistakable knock at the front door of Grimmauld Place.

Rane and Sirius froze, their breath halting in their throats, and looked at each other in the gloom.

“Just someone upstairs,” Sirius whispered quickly, “maybe Buckbeak -”

The knock came again, much more insistently, and they both heard a muffled, familiar voice bellowing, Sirius, open up it’s bloody freezing out here!

“Oh fuck it’s Mad-Eye,” Rane moaned, leaping up and searching around frantically in the dark for her pants. Sirius was hopping up and down madly, pulling his own up. Rane at last located her jeans and abandoning all pretense dropped to the floor and yanked them on unceremoniously while flat on her back, arching her hips up to get them over her butt.

“I think we broke something -”

“We’ll get it later, forget it -”

“Your belt!”

Sirius looked down at his pants, which were already trying to slide off his lean hips, and sighed raucously. Another loud knock came - BAM-BAM-BAM - and Rane could see Mad-Eye perfectly in her mind, standing on the stoop in the swirling snow, rapping the door with his staff.

“Do you think he can see all the way in here?” Rane asked suddenly as Sirius looped his belt through his pants hastily, the buckle clanging. “With his crazy eye, I mean?”

“Dunno,” Sirius said worriedly, “I never thought - but we can’t -”

He took Rane by the shoulders, brushing her off. She smoothed his hair quickly, and he paused to kiss her forehead.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too, now go get the door!” Rane laughed, shoving him towards the entry to the pantry. He opened it, letting in a rush of stingingly bright light, and turned once to throw her a lopsided grin before dashing off towards the door.

Rane stared around her feet, hoping they hadn’t broken anything important. It looked to be just a musty jar that had shattered, and near the entry the plate of butter she’d carried in here still lay face-down on the ground, but beyond that it wasn’t immediately obvious that the room had just been used for decidedly unpantrylike reasons. Rane pulled her wand, waving it as she left, and the butter vanished in a whiff of bluish smoke.

“Morning Alastor,” Sirius was saying from the corridor before the door, sounding slightly out of breath. “I was just about to take a nap, I don’t think Molly expected you until later - she’s still upstairs sleeping with Harry and the rest of them . . .”

Rane arranged herself at the breakfast table quickly, pulled the nearest mug of butterbeer towards her, and after a moment’s hesitation crossed her legs.

“Thought it best to drop in a bit before Tonks,” Mad-Eye’s voice echoed gruffly in return. Rane could hear the distinct thud of his peg-leg as he made his way down the hallway. “In case we were tailed, y’know . . . Double back, return this afternoon . . .”

He strode at last into the kitchen, pulling his hood back from his grizzled head, and both his normal and his magical eye fixed at once on Rane.

“Morning Mad-Eye,” Rane said, smiling broadly.

“’Lo, Rane,” Mad-Eye said, nodding to her and leaning his staff against the wall as he removed his traveling cloak. “Hope I didn’t, er, interrupt anything . . .”

His magical blue eye rolled around to stare out of the side of his head - directly towards the pantry, Rane noted with some anxiety.

“Nothing, nothing,” Sirius said, sweeping past him and glancing at Rane over Mad-Eye’s shoulder. “Er, fancy a spot of tea? We’ve got breakfast made, it may be a bit cold -”

“Spot of tea’d be just the thing, Sirius,” Mad-Eye said, taking a seat at the table and grabbing for the plate of bacon nearest him. “Colder than a bugger outside, almost wish I could just stay indoors ‘til we call on Arthur . . . Mad what happened to him, isn’t it?”

“Mad,” Sirius agreed, putting the kettle on.

“I dunno about you, but Dumbledore didn’t tell me a single stinking thing,” Rane said.

“Dumbledore says Potter had another vision, or a dream, or whatever he’s calling them these days,” Mad-Eye said, dropping his voice a notch. “I haven’t seen Arthur just yet but Kingsley says those are fang-marks, no question about it. Venomous, too, knocked him out cold, Healers can’t stop him bleeding . . .”

“What was a snake doing in the Department of Mysteries?” Rane asked as Sirius set a cup of tea down in front of Mad-Eye and took a seat himself.

“Much obliged, Sirius . . . I’m sure I don’t know,” Mad-Eye said darkly, “but I think we all know who’s behind it.”

There was a grim pause as they all pondered this.

“A better question is what we’re going to tell the Ministry about why Arthur was up there to begin with,” said Sirius, leaning back in his chair. He was finally beginning to fell the effects of a full night without any sleep; the circles beneath his eyes were more pronounced that ever.

“Dumbledore’ll take care of it,” Mad-Eye said confidently. “Nothing he can’t handle.”

“Well, best of luck to Fudge covering it up, then,” Rane muttered moodily, sipping her butterbeer and gazing into the distance.

“Speaking of, I heard about you getting sacked,” Mad-Eye said, his magical eye whizzing about to stare straight up to the ceiling. “Didn’t have a chance to give you my commiserations, by the time I saw the article in the _Prophet_ Dumbledore’d already sent you off someplace on Order business, wouldn’t tell any of us where you’d gone . . .”

“The Elves,” Rane replied, still low. “I’m trying to keep them on our side.”

“Well, right,” Mad-Eye nodded, “must’ve been in America, wasn’t it? The _Prophet_ mentioned you’d been in New Y-”

“Oh, that article was _bullshit!”_ Rane snapped suddenly, flaring. “Those fuckers chased me all the way across the pond, caught me in some bar the first night I got there, I mean who _does_ that? And what do _they_ care what I do with my time now that I’m shitcanned, anyway? Here I’d just gotten finished telling the Council how, you know, _kind and forgiving_ the Ministry is and how they appreciate how much the Elves helped them during the First War, and suddenly here come a gaggle of jackasses taking pictures of me having a beer! I mean, is it against the goddam law to have one fucking _beer?”_

  
Sirius and Mad-Eye stared at her, bewildered by this outburst.

"And what's worse," Rane went on heatedly, "did you _read_ the horseshit they wrote about me? How I'm like this . . . this, I dunno, unhinged maniac running around kicking up shit for Fudge? _Espionage?_ Really, though?!"

She put on a gruff falsetto, rocking her head back and forth sardonically.

"'Rane Roth, deranged half-Elf Auror, dismissed in disgrace, known to be temperamental,' blah blah fucking _blah,"_ she mimed.  "What a bunch of hot garbage, man."

“The Prophet’s all a lot of claptrap these days,” Mad-Eye said sagely, sipping his tea. “Don’t let it get to you. All about public image, that . . . You think that’s bad, you ought to see the sort of stuff they say about me . . .”

  
“And me,” Sirius added, grinning at her.

  
Rane sighed, smiling. “Just . . . It really gets to me, how -” She sighed, setting her butterbeer down so hard it nearly spilled. “- How stupid Fudge is being about all of this.”

Sirius sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “Mad-Eye, I’m asleep on my feet,” he said, yawning hugely. “Not to be a terrible host or anything . . .”

“Both of you, off to bed,” Mad-Eye said at once, waving his hand. “I won’t be here much longer. We’ll see the lot of you in a bit . . .”

Rane and Sirius were grateful to escape Mad-Eye. They walked upstairs together, side by side. When they reached the landing where Ginny was presumably fast asleep, Sirius paused, looking at Rane questioningly.

“Can I . . . come with you?” she asked, looking at him.

Sirius rolled his eyes. “What kind of a stupid question is that?”


	8. The Order's Initiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the story of how Rane came to be a member of the Order of the Phoenix is recounted in all its potentially explosive glory

The morning of June the twentieth found Rane Roth working insanely late, well into the morning of what was supposed to be her day off. It was going on two-thirty, and aside from the barmy old housekeeper who patrolled the corridors after hours, muttering to himself and following an enchanted broom through the empty hallways, the Auror’s office was quite deserted. Not even the usual flurry of occasional late-night inter-office memos could be seen fluttering about.

Rane sat Indian-style on top of her desk, a menagerie of papers and Daily Prophet clippings spread before her, a thermos of now-cold coffee near at hand. She had shed her robes in favor of a pair of jean shorts and a Holyhead Harpies t-shirt, something she would never have dreamed of doing if Cornelius Fudge was still there (of course Fudge was never at the office past teatime, true to form, so she was quite safe); her boots were sitting discarded in a pile on the floor beneath her desk, and her dark hair was pulled back into an untidy knot at the nape of her neck. Every now and then, as she studied the mess of papers, her chin began to sink slowly towards her collarbone, only to snap back up a moment later as she stared around her, bleary-eyed.

Truth be told, when she’d become an Auror, she had always thought it would be a bit more . . . Well, exciting. She’d known, of course, that for someone as low-ranking and young as she was, it might be years before she was given any duties of real import, and that was par for the course, absolutely fine. It was just, all this paperwork was . . . Well, may as well just say it . . .

“Boring,” Rane muttered under her breath, circling something in red ink with the quill stuck between her fingers. She blew a raspberry, her eyes narrowed. “Paperwork is so . . . Damn . . . _Boring_ . . .”

“Boring but necessary, I am afraid,” said an amused voice from her left.

Rane jumped so violently that she tumbled off the side of her desk, yelping. A large quantity of the paperwork she had been working on went with her in a flapping sheet and her thermos flew an impressive distance, striking the side of John Dawlish’s cubicle with a loud bang and exploding in a spray all over his framed photograph of Eldritch Diggory, who darted from his portrait, squeaking in outrage.

“Oh, I am sorry,” the voice went on, still vaguely amused, “I must really learn to announce myself, mustn’t I?”

Rane scrambled to her feet, her hair in disarray, nearly slipping again on the papers beneath her feet. Standing there, clad in midnight-blue robes, was Albus Dumbledore, his long white beard tied into an ornate knot halfway down his chest. He was regarding her over his half-moon spectacles, looking faintly amused.

“Albus!” Rane spluttered. “What are you - how did you get into my -?”

“Well, as it so happens,” said Dumbledore, “Reginald, the housekeeper, is a dear friend of mine."

He waved his wand. A large, cushy red armchair manifested itself out of thin air, and he seated himself comfortably.

“He was kind enough to allow me inside, in hopes of catching you here," he explained. "I do apologize for giving you a fright, I assure you it was not my intention.”

Rane gaped at him, at a loss for words. She knew who Dumbledore was, of course - who _didn’t_ know him, after all? - but her exchanges with him had been quite sporadic, most of them having taken place when she was assigned to Hogwarts security the prior year for the Triwizard Tournament. She had always liked him quite a lot, in spite of Fudge’s numerous tirades about him; nonetheless, she couldn’t think of a single reason why he would be calling on her, of all people, in the wee hours of the morning . . .

“Allow me to explain my unannounced visit,” Dumbledore said, as if reading her mind. “Can you step away from what I’m sure is an important bit of work for a moment?”

Rane stared at the floor, where the scattered vestiges of her night’s work was flung hither and yon beneath her.

“It’s - it’s not important, really,” she said, still quite startled, sounding to her own ears like someone almost blubbering. “Just . . . Just International Statute of Secrecy stuff, regulatory crap . . . Nothing good . . .”

She had no idea why she was explaining this to Dumbledore, who was watching her alertly as if he would like nothing more than to hear what she had to say regarding the regulatory crap she was working on. She cleared her throat.

“Er - I mean, of course, I’ve got a minute,” she said, pulling her wand and waving it distractedly towards Dawlish’s desk. The coffee vanished, for the most part, but Eldritch Diggory still had not reappeared; Rane suspected he was insulted by the impromptu shower he’d received.

“Excellent,” said Dumbledore cheerfully, “please, come have a seat.”

He waved his wand once again, and a second cushy armchair sprang into existence across from his own, this one bright yellow. She stepped over the pile of papers, feeling very cognizant of her missing shoes, and padded over to Dumbledore in her sock feet, smoothing her shirt self-consciously.

“I dunno if Fudge would be thrilled about you being here, you know,” Rane told Dumbledore, sinking down into the absurdly comfortable seat he’d conjured for her. “He’s got it out for you these days, I’m sure you know . . .”

“Oh, I am certain that he would be quite beside himself,” Dumbledore replied calmly, crossing his legs and steepling his fingers, “so I hope you won’t find it too impolite of me to ask that we keep this between ourselves.”

Rane nodded, mystified.

“I very much appreciate your discretion,” Dumbledore said politely. He gestured at the chair. “Do you like it?”

Rane made a quite involuntary guttural sound of contentment. “Ugh, it’s phenomenal. I’ve been sitting on that desk since six, you’ve got no idea . . .”

“Yes, this spell has proven most useful over the years,” Dumbledore mused, stroking the arm of his chair affectionately. “I rather enjoy a nice armchair. _Egyptian cotton_ , you know.”

“Looks like chintz,” Rane remarked. “Well done.”

“Yes, it’s quite good, isn’t it?”

Rane sighed, crossing her legs. “So what can I do for you?”

Dumbledore regarded Rane in silence for a moment.

“You may be wondering why I chose to visit you at such a peculiar hour,” he said after a moment.

“I am indeed wondering,” Rane admitted, smiling.

“Well,” Dumbledore said, “in truth, I have come to make a proposal.”

“A proposal?”

“Indeed. One which I very much hope you accept.”

Rane sat listening, perplexed. “Like a job?”

Dumbledore inclined his head slightly. “Something like that, yes. You are a skilled Auror, and that coupled with your Elven heritage makes you a valuable individual indeed, as I am certain you must know. But first,” he added, lifting one long finger, “I must share with you a few pertinent pieces of information that I postulate you have not yet been made aware of.”

Rane studied him for a moment, trying to discern what the nature of this proposal could possibly be, but Dumbledore’s face was quite unreadable and it was very late. She shrugged and nodded.

“Firstly, and most importantly,” Dumbledore said, “It is my sad duty to inform you that Lord Voldemort has returned.”

Rane sucked in an involuntary breath, almost as shocked at hearing this sudden proclamation as she had been when Dumbledore appeared in the first place. For several seconds she said nothing; this sentence, so incongruous with the orderly office they sat in, hung between them absurdly. Dumbledore returned her gaze, quite calm.

 _“What_ did you say?” she said at last.

“I said,” Dumbledore repeated patiently, “that Lord Voldemort has returned.”

“Voldemort’s dead,” Rane said flatly. “He died years ago. When I was a kid.”

But Dumbledore was shaking his head.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that he did not, in fact, die at all. Not entirely. His spirit endured, taking on various manifestations in his quest to reclaim a corporeal form. This very summer, not two weeks ago, he achieved his goal at last. He now possesses a body, and he is gathering his faithful Death Eaters to him even as we speak.”

Rane didn’t know whether to laugh or not. Dumbledore certainly wasn’t laughing; he remained motionless, his fingers still steepled, looking at her from beneath his white brows, unsmiling.

“People can’t just - just _recover_ from being dead, Albus,” she said.

“They most certainly and regrettably cannot,” Dumbledore agreed, inclining his head politely. “However, as I have just explained, Voldemort has not, in fact, ever dead in the traditional sense. He was simply reduced to the merest form of life. He has not risen from the dead, only returned to his body.”

“How?” Rane asked him frankly. “How is that possible? How do you _know_ this?”

“Harry Potter witnessed it in person,” Dumbledore explained, watching Rane closely. “As you know, he was chosen as a fourth Triwizard champion and therefore competed in the final task this summer. The task was botched, the Cup was made into a Portkey without my knowledge, and Harry and another student were transported to a graveyard, where Voldemort and a few of his closest supporters were waiting. There, the magic necessary to rejuvenate Voldemort was performed. Harry returned having escaped Voldemort. The second student was killed. The direct descendant, in fact, of the founder of the very office you hold.”

Rane’s eyes cut over to the portrait of Eldritch Diggory, who still had not returned to his portrait.

“I was under the impression,” she said slowly, “that Cedric Diggory died in an accident during the Tournament -”

But Dumbledore was shaking his head.

“Cedric Diggory was murdered,” he said quietly.

Rane sat in silence again, looking at Dumbledore, who continued to survey her over his half-moon specs, looking quite cool. Rane felt less relaxed; indeed, though there was of course no way that this story about Voldemort could possibly be true, she could feel her heart beating hummingbird-quick in her chest. She remembered the early days, though she’d been very young; her father had been relentlessly pursued by Death Eaters, and they had spent much of the ensuing, chaotic years before Voldemort had been bested in hiding. She remembered the fear very well, all these years later; the foreboding thrill of terror with every knock at the door, the escape plan her father had crafted ( _Through the crawlspace, into the basement, stay there until the Prewetts come for you_ , he’d drilled into her head, but of course then the Prewetts had been murdered, hadn’t they?), even the Daily Prophet headlines, lying at the breakfast table each morning, announcing a new family slaughtered, a new disaster. Her father had been gone so often and so long many times that she had become sure in her heart that he’d been killed, and so had taken his sword, which he hung by the back door, and unsheathing it had stood before the front door, holding its heavy blade aloft, her small arms trembling, wishing with all her heart to be the one to run Voldemort through if he found out where she was. It had never been Voldemort to come through that door, of course, but she understood in her simple child way that the risks she perceived were all very real.

And most unnerving part of all, Rane realized, was that no one had briefed the Aurors on the details of Cedric Diggory’s demise. It was standard procedure, whenever a magical mishap resulted in a fatality, to negotiate the terms of the circumstances and adjust the guidelines where needed; it was a basic function of the Auror’s office, after all. But no one had ever come to them with that information. Indeed, hardly a word had been spoken on the subject.

“I am aware that this may come as a bit of a shock to you,” Dumbledore said gently.

“A shock?” Rane said in a low voice. She shook her head. “Your cat getting run over by a car, _that’s_ a shock. Losing your wedding ring down the kitchen drain is a shock. _This_ . . .” She uttered a humorless laugh. “This is absurd.”

“I wish it were,” Dumbledore replied wistfully.

They sat in silence for another few moments. Dumbledore continued to watch her patiently; it seemed that he was allowing Rane free reign to arrive at her own conclusions, and in her own time. Rane sat sideways in the armchair, her fists clasped before her mouth, her eyebrows drawn down, thinking.

“There’s no magic that would reinstate someone to a body,” she said abruptly. "Even if someone _could_ survive without one, which I doubt -"

“There is an ancient and dark spell,” Dumbledore said gravely. “It requires several bodily ingredients. The bone of the father . . . The flesh of the servant . . . The blood of an enemy. The latter was the reason why Harry’s presence was required.”

“The Ministry would know,” Rane said firmly, “Fudge would know, he would tell the rest of us, the Aurors, so that we could -”

“Cornelius,” said Dumbledore, “is aware.”

Rane blinked. “He’s aware that Voldemort is back?”

Dumbledore was nodding. “He refuses to believe it,” he said. “I believe that the idea of it frightens him; it means trouble for the Ministry such as it has not had to face for nearly fifteen years. It is also my belief that he fears that such an announcement would cost him the office he holds.”

“But - Dumbledore - there’s no - where’s the _proof_ -?”

“I am prepared to take Harry’s word,” Dumbledore replied evenly. “I believe that the death of Cedric Diggory is proof enough.”

“How do you know _Harry_ didn’t kill him?” Rane asked.

Dumbledore merely looked at her, and she sensed the merest touch of chill in his voice when he spoke at last.

“I do not believe that Harry would lie about this,” he said. “Nor do I believe he is capable of killing a fellow student.”

“No,” Rane said. “You think Voldemort killed Diggory.”

“I do.”

“You think he tried to kill Harry, too.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s back after all this time.”

Dumbledore nodded, his glasses flashing.

Rane sat silently, pondering this. She didn’t want to think that this was possible; Dumbledore was right, Voldemort’s return would mean hell for the Ministry. For the world.  
In the end, it wasn’t Dumbledore that convinced her that it might indeed be true; it was a conversation she had had with her father, shortly before she had turned sixteen. He had taken her to an Elven council to be confirmed into their ranks, and as they had ridden to the Elvish city through the snowy, silent forest on horseback, she had asked him about Voldemort for the first time in perhaps six years.

 _Some of the kids at school thing he’s not really dead_ , she had said, hoping her voice sounded casual.

She had expected her father to admonish her for saying such a thing, or to reassure her that Voldemort was long gone and to quit worrying so much, but his answer had shaken her badly.

 _He’s not_ , Wade had said quietly.

Rane had turned her head to look at him in astonishment. _What? No, dad, he’s been gone for years, he_ can’t _still be alive_ -

 _He is_ , Wade had replied, still soft. He’d turned his light blue eyes towards his daughter, his expression gentle, as if breaking a difficult truth. _He’s alive, Rane. I wish I was wrong_.

 _What makes you say that_? Rane had asked him fearfully.

Wade had craned his neck to peer up at the sky, where snow was gently falling on them from fluffy gray clouds. The tops of the pine trees all around them were white with it already. As he’d looked, a murder of crows, inky-black against the pale sky, had flown noisily overhead, cawing raucously.

 _You’ll learn, one day, that if you learn to listen to the earth, it has things to say,_ Wade had told her. _Warnings, mayhap_.

 _So the earth told you that You-Know-Who is still alive_? Rane had asked skeptically.

 _I can hear him still_ , Wade had replied, his breath puffing out before his face in a white cloud. _That's all. He's waiting for the right moment, maybe_.

Now, as Rane sat before Albus Dumbledore, twenty-four and far removed from that young girl she’d been, she felt the same deep, cold fear threading through her. Because Wade had been right; she had begun to learn to listen. And she knew just what he had meant that afternoon. Though they hadn’t spoken of Voldemort again after that, she knew in her heart that he had been telling her the truth. Perhaps he’d known since the beginning, and he’d wished to spare her; whatever the case, she had put it out of her mind, and now, as she sat recalling that day, it seemed so near and vital to her that she could almost feel the snowflakes on her cheeks.

“Albus,” she said softly. “I don’t . . . I don’t want to believe it.”

“Nor do I,” Dumbledore replied. “But we must, nevertheless.”

There was a pause as Rane sat, studying Dumbledore’s face.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “He’s back.”

Dumbledore bowed his head to her graciously, offering her a brilliant smile.

“And now,” he said, with an air of getting past a piece of rather unpleasant business, “at last, we have come to my proposal.”

“You mean there’s more?” Rane said, appalled.

“Ah, but we’ve only just begun!” Dumbledore replied merrily. “Now, if we are to continue, I fear I must insist upon a more exclusive location, as lovely as your office is.”

“Like where?” Rane asked, mystified.

“I have just the place,” Dumbledore had replied, his eyes twinkling. “But I daresay you may want to bring your boots along . . .”

Rane peered down at her socks, and getting up strode over to where her boots were piled beneath her desk. She pulled them on awkwardly, stumbling, and glanced down at the mess of paperwork beneath her desk, very briefly considered gathering it up into some semblance of a stack and leaving it on her desk, then decided to forget about it. Dumbledore, meanwhile, was waving his wand opulently, and both of the armchairs he had conjured vanished with a soft whoosh.

“Where are we going?” Rane asked, pulling on a woolen jacket. “Hopefully someplace indoors, I didn’t bring pants . . .”

“Take my arm when you’re ready,” Dumbledore said, holding out his forearm.

“You do know you can’t Disapparate inside the Ministry after midnight,” Rane reminded him, her eyebrows raised.

“There are many things I cannot do,” Dumbledore said mysteriously. “Disapparating within the Ministry after midnight is not one of them, however.”

He held his arm out to her, his eyes twinkling. Rane grasped his wrist, and with a loud pop, both of them vanished in midair.

On John Dawlish’s desk, within his slightly discolored frame, Eldritch Diggory finally peered around the edge of his photograph, staring around warily for the silly girl that had spilled coffee all over him and finding with some surprise that she was nowhere to be seen.

 

THEY reappeared, for what would be the first of many times for Rane, in the front corridor of Grimmauld Place.

Rane doubled over at once, overcome with nausea.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” she moaned thickly, holding the back of her hand over her mouth and staring up at Dumbledore. “What the hell was _that?”_

“I do apologize,” Dumbledore said, patting her gingerly on the back and looking around brightly. “We pass through a magical protective barrier when we Apparate within Headquarters, you see . . . I am an old man, Rane, I do sometimes forget . . . But don’t fret, it passes quickly.”

Rane made a guttural urking noise. With some difficulty she straightened, looking around her for the first time. They appeared to be in a very gloomy, very old, and very unlived-in house. Many of the paintings were covered with filthy white sheets, and cobwebs hung from the ornate chandeliers overhead. The walls were equipped with old-fashioned gas lamps which cast an eerie orange light across the room, and the wallpaper was peeling and ancient.

“Welcome,” Dumbledore said, “to the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix.”

“The Order of the what?” Rane said cautiously. Whatever else this place was, she felt certain that it was clearly home to very dark wizards. Dark or crazy, anyway.

“The Order of the Phoenix,” Dumbledore repeated, taking Rane by the elbow and gently leading her further into the house. “Come into the kitchen, a spot of tea will help with the nausea . . .”

Rane followed Dumbledore into the kitchen, where the light was, if possible, even worse. Several candles were alight on the table, most of them burned down to the wick, spreading thick white wax around themselves in pools. A plate with several gnawed-on chicken bones was sitting there, along with a half-finished goblet of wine.

“Please,” Dumbledore said, sweeping a hand at the table. Rane sat carefully down, trying not to jostle her insides too much for fear of spewing her lunch all over the place. Dumbledore was right, though; the nausea was beginning to slowly lessen.

“Sirius!” Dumbledore called, striding into the kitchen. “Might I borrow the use of your kettle for our guest?”

There came the gentle sound of claws rapping against the hardwood floor, and a moment later a large, shaggy black dog trotted into the room. Rane looked at it with some surprise, then extended the hand that wasn’t pressed against her mouth towards it. The dog sniffed it gingerly, waved its tail idly a few times, then trotted past her with evident disinterest towards the kitchen.

“Friend of yours?” Rane asked, watching the dog’s shaggy hindquarters vanish into the kitchen.

“I am pleased to think so,” Dumbledore replied. “An excellent fellow indeed.”

Presently he reappeared, steaming kettle and three cups levitating before him. Dumbledore took a seat across from Rane, waving his hand idly at the kettle, which at once began to pour tea into each cup.

“Think you brought a spare,” Rane said, nodding to the third cup as she took her gratefully.

“Before any further introductions,” Dumbledore said, steepling his fingers and looking across at her smartly, “I must make it clear why I have brought you here.”

“You want me to join this Order of the Phoenix thing,” Rane said, raising her eyebrows. “And possibly also make me puke. Right?”

“More so the former than the latter, but yes,” Dumbledore said, nodding to her.

“Is the Order of the Phoenix a resistance against Voldemort?” Rane asked, sipping her tea.

“It is, indeed.”

“And my dad’s in it.”

Dumbledore looked, for the first time since he’d arrived that night, quite surprised at hearing this.

“Yes,” he said, “he is.”

Rane had known for some time that her father had been involved in some kind of a secret society, though she could never weasel out of him what it was; however, when Dumbledore had told her about Voldemort’s return, it had all begun to fall into place. The long absences from work; his elusive answers to her idle questions about what he’d been up to; even his ever-increasing dealings with the Elves, something he had kept at a minimum for years to spare Cornelius Fudge any undue anxiety, had clued her in.

“I knew he was up to something,” Rane murmured. “He’s been acting really weird lately. I dunno why he wouldn’t tell me . . .”

“As he explains it, he merely wished to keep you out of harm’s way as often as possible,” said Dumbledore. “As any father would, no doubt. However . . .” Dumbledore sighed. “I fear caution is a luxury we simply cannot afford any longer.”

“So this Order . . . Fudge doesn’t know about it, obviously . . .”

“No,” said Dumbledore. “And it would be most unwise to alert him, until such a time that he is prepared to accept the truth of the situation. At that time, and only then, will we once again be on the same side.”

“Who else is in this thing?” Rane asked. “And where exactly are we, anyway? Does this place belong to someone in the Order?”

“Well,” said Dumbledore, leaning back, “that brings us to the third and hopefully final shock for the evening.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are, no doubt, familiar with the name Sirius Black,” said Dumbledore.

Rane nodded, suddenly suspicious. “Only one I know of is a pretty crazy son of a bitch who blew up a mess of Muggles. That one?”

“The very same,” Dumbledore agreed. “Though as it happens, the allegations against him are quite false.”

“What is this, _The Quibbler_?” Rane said, her eyebrows high, the beginning of a bemused smile on her face. “There were witnesses who saw the whole thing, he blew the damn street apart. I should know, I sat for the inquisition after he got out of Azkaban, as a matter of fact . . . ”

Dumbledore seemed about to say something, then he appeared to reconsider. He clasped his hands on the table, looking at Rane carefully.

“I feel quite certain,” Dumbledore said slowly, “that given the fullness of time, you will learn the exhaustive details of what transpired the night Sirius was accused of the crimes which sent him to prison for thirteen years. What you will be learning tonight is very much abridged, and your first instinct, I am certain, will be to doubt what I tell you. I realize it will be difficult for you, but I must ask you to suspend disbelief for a few brief moments while I explain myself, and restrain yourself from acting rashly.”

“What are you talking about?” Rane said, the smile fading from her face. “Why are you bringing this up?”

Dumbledore remained where he was, quite calm, saying nothing. It appeared almost as if he were waiting for her to draw her own conclusions.

Rane wasn’t stupid; it took her the space of a few seconds to arrive there on her own. She suddenly made a sharp motion, as if to get to her feet.

“Albus, are you trying to tell me you _know_ where Sirius Black is?” said Rane. “That he’s, what, a part of this Order thing?”

“Please consider what I just said to you,” said Dumbledore, still quite cool. “I will explain everything -”

“No, first of all, you need to explain to me what you’re doing harboring a fugitive,” said Rane, looking at him in complete bafflement. She hadn’t expected any of what had happened tonight, but _this_ . . . This was a whole new level of crazy. “Albus, do you know how illegal this is? Do you realize that my job is to _arrest_ you right now?”

“I am perfectly aware,” said Dumbledore. “I only ask that you hear me out, Rane. After you have heard what I have to say, if you still feel you must take me away, I will not resist.”

Rane looked across the table at him, her hand stuffed into her pocket, gripping her wand hard.

Dumbledore turned his head towards the kitchen. “Sirius, would you please come here?”

“Does she have a wand on her?” said a gruff voice from the kitchen.

“Of course she does,” Dumbledore replied calmly. “I daresay you have as well, if it comes to defending yourself, haven’t you?”

Rane had gotten to her feet in an instant, her wand now held aloft before her, pointing toward the kitchen doorway. Dumbledore made no move to perturb her, only remained where he was, watching her over his steepled fingers.

“He’s here,” she said brusquely. “Right now.”

“This house belongs to Sirius,” said Dumbledore. “I daresay he has more right than most to be here.

Rane’s mind was racing. All the training, all the preparation she had been given at work to deal with any encounters with Sirius Black were zipping through her mind lightning-quick; he was a skilled wizard, one of the best the Ministry had ever seen, he was taller than she was by four or five inches, he had an affinity for physical combat. She felt confident in her ability, but this guy had killed people, _innocent_ people -

Whoever it was in the kitchen gave an annoyed sigh. “Right, then, here we go.”

The man that appeared in the doorway was tall and very thin in a pair of tattered robes, with bright eyes staring out of his gaunt face and long, matted black hair. Rane knew him at once; she had seen photos of him plastered all over the Ministry for almost two years now. What was worse, he held a wand at his side as he looked at her warily.

“Rane, this is Sirius Black,” Dumbledore said. “Sirius, this is Rane Roth, our newest recruit.”

“I know who he is,” Rane said, her voice low. Her wand remained pointed directly at Sirius, unwavering.

“Pleasure,” said Sirius, eyeing her wand guardedly. “Mind pointing that thing someplace else?”

“Lose the wand, man,” said Rane. “Right the fuck now.”

“Bit of a mouth on her, this one?” said Sirius wryly to Dumbledore, though he kept his eyes on Rane’s wand.

“This isn’t a joke, brother, I’ll send your ass through that wall if I have to.” Rane gestured with her wand again, sending a few purple sparks out of the end of it. Her heart was pounding.

“Look, I’m not going to curse you or anything, alright?” Sirius told her. His voice was gruff, as if from disuse. “I’m keeping it out, though, in case I need to _Protego_ something, because you’re looking a bit mad at the moment -”

“Lose it,” Rane said loudly.

“Rane -”

“Last chance,” Rane said.

“Rane, please -”

“Drop that FUCKING wand, bro!” Rane shouted, her wand spraying purple sparks once again in her agitation. Sirius had made no move at all; he was looking at her with a combination of unease and exasperation.

“Get a hold of yourself, mate,” he said, stuffing his wand into his pocket. “Better? Blimey, don’t blow the place up . . .”

Rane’s mouth dropped open at this bald-faced wisecrack. “Get a _hold_ of myself? _This_ motherfucker - !”

 _“Rane,”_ said Dumbledore.

Rane looked at Dumbledore over her shoulder. _“What?”_

“Sirius is on our side,” said Dumbledore. “As I explained a moment ago, he is quite innocent and in truth a rather lovely man. I implore you to lower your wand and show him some courtesy.”

Rane gaped at Dumbledore, then turned her eyes on Sirius again.

“How about all those Muggles he obliterated?” she shot at him. "Was that for _our side?"_

“Wasn’t me,” said Sirius simply.

“Who was it, then? Santa Claus?”

“Peter Pettigrew,” said Dumbledore.

“Oh, you mean that _other_ guy you offed!” said Rane loudly. “How convenient! Blame the dead guy who can’t defend himself, right?”

“He’s not dead,” said Sirius. He spoke with the dry tones of a man who has explained this ad infinitum. “He’s alive and well and working alongside Voldemort as we speak. He blew up that street, chopped off his finger and made off like the slimy little _coward_ he is.”

At this last bit, Sirius’s voice betrayed an unmistakable and contemptuous revulsion. The emotion twisted his face, making him suddenly frightening. Rane’s first instinct upon seeing this expression was that such a wildly intense emotion couldn’t possibly be forged.

“And why, exactly, would he want to go and do something like that?” she asked him, her voice slightly lower.

“He’d just betrayed Lily and James Potter,” said Sirius. And now there was no mistaking the sheer emotion in his voice. “I caught him in the open, confronted him, and he shouted some things to make it look like I’d been the one to do them in. Made a nice little scene for the Ministry, who ate it right up, didn’t they?”

Rane looked at him, her wand still outstretched. Sirius was watching her now, his eyes bright. His face was twisted with passion as he told this story. A moment of silence passed between them.

“I believe,” said Dumbledore, “that is about the summing up of the thing. As for the details, you are welcome to divulge what you please at a later date, Sirius.”

During all of this, he had remained at the table, watching the two of them with the polite interest of a man observing a game of table tennis, rather than a potentially explosive shouting match between two armed strangers.

“I‘m happy to share,” Sirius said, though he looked a bit shaken from this recounting. “We’re all on the same side, and I can assure you I’ve never murdered so much as a flea in all my life. Now, can I _please_ come over there and have my tea?”

Rane stood a moment longer, her wand still pointed at Sirius, then with a terrific effort lowered it. Eyeing Sirius, she sank slowly back into her seat. Sirius stuffed his wand into his pocket, showed her the palms of his hands, then walked over to the table and took a seat, pulling the steaming cup of tea towards him.

There was an utterly absurd moment of silence between them. Rane was staring at Sirius with avid vigilance, and he was staring back at her, swirling the tea around in his cup idly and looking quite cool.

“Can we try this once again?” asked Sirius at length, outstretching his hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Rane eyed it uncertainly. Then, very slowly, she reached out, took it, and pumped it up and down once before letting go quickly.

“Er - um - nice to meet you too,” she said hesitantly, before adding, “Sorry. For the, uh - the - I didn’t mean to be rude,” she finished lamely. “Just - just instinct, you know. Auror, and everything.”

Sirius smiled at her. He had a rather lovely smile. “No worries.”

“Excellent!” said Dumbledore, clapping his hands. “Now that we’re all friends, shall we get down to business?”

 


	9. Ylle Thalas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sirius, Remus, Dumbledore and Mad-Eye join Wade on a rescue mission, and some frightening truths are exposed

Sirius jolted awake, his heart pounding, staring around him in his dark bedroom. For a moment, as he lay there, propped onto his elbows, he wasn’t sure that he’d heard anything at all. It was perfectly still in Grimmauld Place; faintly, he could hear the ticking of the clock on the landing below him.

He had fallen asleep on top of his tattered blanket, his boots still on, hands laced behind his head; glancing out the window, he could still see the dim vestiges of the late afternoon light, orange and rich, stealing through the slit between the curtains and the glass; hardly even sundown, then. He’d stretched out on his bed, with no intention to fall asleep after the meeting tonight, but apparently he had -

SLAM.

That was the front door shutting. No doubt about it. Sirius had been listening to its gruesome, metallic voice since before he knew how to shave. He got to his feet, stood there for a moment allowing the blood to reach his brain, and strode yawning towards the staircase.

“Sirius!” a voice was calling from downstairs. “Where are you?”

Sirius leaned over the railing, his long hair swinging, peering down into the darkness beneath him. Far below, the glow of a wand bobbed along in the gloom; the tattered robes and pale visage of Remus Lupin, his harried expression perceptible even from two floors up, was visible in its pale glow.

“Mind not slamming that door, Moony?” Sirius called down wryly. “I’d rather not wake up mum if I can help it . . .”

Remus’s head craned towards Sirius‘s voice; he pointed his wand upwards, casting the high, cobwebbed ceiling and peeling wallpaper of Grimmauld Place into sharp resolution.

“Sirius,” said Remus, his eyes glittering hollows in his face. “Come down. At once.”

“I’m working on it,” Sirius replied as he descended the staircase, trailing one hand along the dusty railing idly. “Hold your horses, you caught me having a lie-down . . .”

Remus said nothing, only turned and strode toward the living room, extinguishing his wand and waving his other hand towards the sconces on the wall in one smooth motion. The gas lamps popped alight obediently. Sirius arrived at the landing at last, rolling the sleeves of his robes up, smiling wanly at Remus. Remus stood at the opposite end of the livingroom, watching Sirius carefully.

“Alright, mate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Remus still had not spoken. He was standing motionless at the other end of the livingroom, still watching Sirius, slightly out of breath. Sirius paused rolling up his sleeves, his brow slightly furrowed. Something about Remus’s body language seemed almost guarded. He was watching Sirius from beneath his brows, quite unsmiling; his wand was still held loosely in his other hand, pointed at the floor. Sirius was reminded suddenly and forcibly of what Sirius and James had always affectionately called Remus’s “furry little problem” back at Hogwarts. Sirius could remember seeing Remus staring around himself with an expression just like this as a werewolf, cautious and wary, like a fox scenting the air.

“Moony, what is it?” Sirius said, feeling a touch of concern.

“Dumbledore should be here shortly,” said Remus quietly.

“Remus,” said Sirius firmly. “What in bloody hell is the matter with you? You’re acting like a -”

“There’s been an attack,” said Remus.

“An attack?” said Sirius sharply. “Where? What’s happened?”

Remus shook his head. “I’m not sure yet, I’ve only just learned about it. Dumbledore asked me to meet him here. Mad-Eye should be arriving as well.”

Sirius felt a spark of impatience. He lifted his hands, shrugging in a gesture of frustrated bewilderment. “Well, what _do_ you know? Surely Dumbledore told you _something_ before he sent you -”

Before Sirius could finish, there was a loud knock at the front door. Remus swept past Sirius wordlessly. A moment later, Mad-Eye’s clunking gait could be heard hurrying down the corridor.

“Got here as fast as I could,” he was saying gruffly as he came into the livingroom, leaning heavily on his staff, his magical eye twitching around to settle on Sirius. “Dumbledore here yet?”

“No, no, not yet,” Remus said, shaking his head and peering out the window at the London streets below. “I’ve only just gotten here myself, but I’m certain he’ll be along.”

“Sirius know?” Mad-Eye asked, inclining his head at Sirius.

“Do I know _what?”_ asked Sirius.

“That’ll be a no, then,” said Mad-Eye as if Sirius hadn’t spoken.

“What - I - don’t - what _is_ all this rubbish?” Sirius said, flustered. “I’ve only just woken up, you’ll forgive me for not playing twenty questions just yet, sorry -!”

“Dumbledore will explain everything,” said Remus. “Just take it easy, Sirius.”

“Take it easy, take _what_ easy?” Sirius burst out, his temper flaring.

But before Remus could answer, there was a loud POP and Dumbledore suddenly manifested in the musty livingroom, lifting an eddy of dust around him.

“Good evening, Alastor, Sirius,” he said at once, bowing to the three of them. “Remus, thank you for your haste.”

Remus nodded to him wordlessly, still watching Sirius.

“Albus, what’s happened?” Sirius asked Dumbledore. “These two won’t tell me a bloody thing except that there’s been an attack -”

“There has indeed been an attack,” said Dumbledore. “No one from the Order has been injured yet, as far as I am aware -”

 _“Yet?”_ Sirius stared around him incredulously, feeling the beginnings of real anger rising within him. Remus and Mad-Eye had shown up to headquarters while this confrontation was still happening?

“Yet,” Dumbledore agreed, bowing his head slightly.

“Well, what are we standing around for?” Sirius said impatiently. “Do they need help?”

“I have no doubt that they do,” said Dumbledore, a statement which provided exactly zero applicable information.

“Dammit, what the bloody HELL is going on?!” Sirius nearly shouted. “Stop pussyfooting around it and _tell_ me, _one_ of you -!”

“An assembly of Death Eaters has attacked two Order members,” said Dumbledore, speaking over Sirius. “We shall know more very shortly.”

Sirius’s mouth opened to protest this enigmatic reply, but he was interrupted by a third loud knock at the door. Remus made as if to go to the corridor to answer it, but Dumbledore had already vanished from the living room in a swirl of deep purple robes. A moment later, he reentered, followed now by a tall, imposing man that Sirius recognized immediately as Wade Roth, Rane’s father and a renowned Elven warrior as well as an Auror alongside Mad-Eye at the Ministry of Magic. He was a tall, well-built man, possessed of long, dark blonde hair and pale blue eyes. He swept back the hood of his dark green cloak as he strode into the livingroom, giving them all a cursory glance. He looked more harried than Sirius could remember ever seeing him. His mouth was drawn down into a frown, turning his pale face into a roué of dismay.

“Ylle Thalas,” said Wade at once without greeting them, his faint American accent sounding oddly out of place. “That’s where they’re at. Ylle Thalas.”

“You’re sure?” Remus said sharply.

Wade nodded. “Every sentry west of the city is on alert. I’ve ordered reinforcements, but it’ll take them a bit to get there.”

“Ylle Thalas?” said Mad-Eye. “North of London, isn’t it?”

“Northwest, yes,” said Wade, nodding at him quickly.

“Are they alright?” said Dumbledore.

Wade shook his head, his hands on his hips. “They can take care of themselves, the both of them can, but there are just too many factors. If I knew how many they were, that’d be one thing, but as it stands, I’d rather not take the chance.”

And suddenly, as Sirius stared from Wade to Dumbledore, a rush of horrible understanding fell upon him. Ylle Thalas was an Elven city, after all; what better reason for Wade Roth to show up unannounced at headquarters looking as pale as a sheet? What better reason for Remus and Mad-Eye to be standing in Sirius’s house treating him as if he were a bomb ready to go off at the slightest urging?

“Is it Rane?”

Dumbledore, Remus and Mad-Eye all turned to Sirius.

“Is she the one who’s been attacked?“ said Sirius, his voice trembling slightly. He didn’t like the way his heart had doubled its pace in the space of a few seconds, and he liked even less the cold, squeezing sensation of a fear that was almost panic in the center of his solar plexus, radiating outward like a spreading fire.

“Sirius,” said Remus in a quiet voice. “Please stay c -”

“I AM CALM,” said Sirius loudly.

There was a ringing silence in the livingroom, broken only by Sirius’s ragged breathing. Dumbledore seemed on the verge of chastising Sirius for this outburst, but he appeared to dismiss this notion, perhaps realizing the extent of the other man’s alarm.

“Yeah, it was Rane, alright,” said Wade, looking at Sirius in surprise. “Take it down a notch, Sirius, we’re getting there.”

“She was stationed in north London with Tonks this evening,” said Dumbledore. “The Death Eaters in question drew Rane and Tonks away from the city itself and according to Wade, towards Ylle Thalas itself, where they will be more difficult to locate, I would presume.”

“That’s exactly what they were doing,” said Mad-Eye. “Seclusion technique, oldest trick in the book. Lots of cover, nobody around to help . . .”

“Rane knows Ylle Thalas pretty well, but it’s getting close to nightfall and the Death Eaters will know they’re on her turf,” Wade said, “so if I were them I’d -”

“Call for help,” said Mad-Eye, nodding grimly. “The more the better.”

Dumbledore was nodding too. “So time is short, then.”

He looked around at the three other men, all of them looking tensely back at him.

“Look, if you’re going to try to tell me to stay here and let you lot take care of this, I’ve got bad news for you,” said Sirius brusquely. “So if I were in your position, Albus, I’d skip that whole sermon entirely.”

“Sirius,” said Dumbledore slowly, “I am certain that you do not need me to inform you how perilous your being so near to London and out in the open will be for you -”

“No, I certainly don’t!”

“- however, I chose to convene at Grimmauld Place,” Dumbledore went on without pausing, “because I did not wish for you to go plowing off after Rane without understanding the situation first if you were somehow made aware of the circumstances through another means.”

“Well, you got that bit right,” said Sirius, low.

“I realize that you care very much about Rane,” Dumbledore said. “Understand that this does not give you permission to act rashly tonight, no matter what happens to any one of us, including Rane herself. The Order itself is far more important than the sum of its constituents, as you are no doubt aware. Am I clear?”

Sirius looked at Dumbledore for a moment; Dumbledore stared back at him steadily, his blue eyes hard over his half-moon glasses, barring no argument. Sirius had no doubt that had Dumbledore wished it, he could have forced Sirius to stay behind; he was giving him the opportunity to help. So he must have grasped, at least on some level, what Rane meant to him.

“Fine,” said Sirius, nodding.

“We need to get moving,” said Wade, looking at Dumbledore anxiously. “Time’s wasting, Albus. You two ready?”

Remus and Mad-Eye both nodded.

“Sirius, you good?” Wade said, lifting his chin at Sirius.

Sirius nodded. “Excellent. Let’s go.”

“My lead, then,” said Wade, putting his forearm out. Sirius saw the flash of his sword at his waist as he moved, silvery and dully sharp in the dim light. “On three.”

“Prepare yourselves for a fight,” said Dumbledore.

“One - two -”

Sirius met Remus’s eyes across from him. Remus looked peaky and not very well; his eyes were filled with the same worry that Sirius felt, and he had a moment to wonder why he was so concerned about Rane.

“Three!”

The four of them gripped Wade’s forearm and Grimmauld Place vanished in a churning spill of melting shapes and colors.

 

A SPLIT second of pressure and cold darkness later, then the five of them were standing, not on the ancient stained carpet of headquarters, but on a embankment of tall, gently undulating golden grass, on the verge of a dark forest of very tall, dark-wooded trees that leered from above amidst the growing shadows. The failing evening light was purple and red now, streaming between the gnarled branches like blood. The air was chilly, and a light dusting of snow covered the earth underfoot and frosted the treetops with dim bluish-white.  
“Which way, Wade?” said Dumbledore, his wand held aloft. At his side, Remus held his high as well, staring around him cagily.

Wade paused, facing the forest, and Sirius saw him lift his head slightly, exactly like a fox sampling the air. A moment passed this way, the chilly breeze lifting tendrils of Sirius’s hair and teasing them across his face as he stared at Wade’s back, feeling the triphammer of his heartbeat beneath his robes.

After what seemed like an eternity, Wade half-turned back to his four companions, the red light sending his profile into sharp, dangerous resolution.

“West,” he said simply, and turning he strode off into the forest, pulling his wand as he went. Dumbledore, Remus, Sirius and Mad-Eye followed, all of them doing the same.

They hurried silently through the forest, their feet crunching in the shallow snow beneath them. Sirius felt almost wild with impatience; he had never been this close to Ylle Thalas before, and now he knew why the woods surrounding it were so often reputed to be perilous to travel through. The trees were so tall and clearly ancient that they were pillar-like, crawling with thick vines and very queerly alive, seeming to leer.

“There,” said Mad-Eye, gesturing with one gnarled hand.

Sirius followed his finger.

“Footprints,” said Remus sharply. “Can’t be far, then . . .”

“Stay close,” said Dumbledore warningly. “We are nearly upon them, I believe -”

He had no sooner spoken than the forest around them was lit up suddenly by a blinding flash of red light. All five of them dropped, and overhead two Stunning spells cavorted with a high-pitched whistling sound; one of them flew wide entirely, but the other struck a tree trunk where Remus’s head had been not two seconds prior, leaving a long black streak on its bark.

“I SEE YOU OVER THERE!” a harried voice called from nearby. Another spell rang out, striking the snow near Mad-Eye’s staff. “COME OUT AND FIGHT, COWARDS!”

“We’re just here for our friends!” Remus shouted.

“REMUS!” Tonks’s voice suddenly rang out.

Remus made a sudden motion as if to leap to his feet, but Mad-Eye yanked him back down by the scruff of his shirt, hissing at him. The trees were suddenly alight some twenty yards out with a flurry of bright flashing light; a duel, Sirius thought.

Tonks suddenly burst into the clearing ahead of them, her pink hair absurdly brilliant against the dim forest around her. She was facing the opposite direction, her wand out, dueling furiously with two Death Eaters, their masks flashing in the glow. A third was striding out from the forest behind his mates.

Remus leapt up again, this time quite unperturbed by Mad-Eye’s fingers scrabbling at the back of his shirt; Sirius clearly heard the hem of his sweater rip. Wade was on his feet nimbly in a moment, running after Remus, and Sirius followed suit, pulling his wand out hastily.

Remus blew the third Death Eater off of his feet with a single curse, sending him flying onto his back, out cold. He joined Tonks’s side a moment later, his wand a blur. Sirius ran past them, staring around him wildly.

“Rane!” he shouted. “Rane!”

And there she was, just beyond the clearing, surrounded by Death Eaters, at least four of them, equipped not with her wand but her sword; Sirius could see its silvery flashing motion, lightning-quick, as well as the spells her attackers were aiming at her flying off her blade in wild directions. Her long hair was loose and whirling around her head as she spun back and forth; he caught a glimpse of her harried expression, her forehead shining with effort.

“Rane!” he bellowed, sprinting for her.

 _“Sirius!”_ Dumbledore’s voice came sharply from behind him, but he paid it no mind. Let Dumbledore be angry if he wanted.

Rane spun on her heel, aiming a reflected curse for one of her assailants; it struck him neatly in the chest, sending him onto his back in a dead faint. One of the others spotted Sirius, and his wand wove around to point at him at once.

“IMPEDIMENTA!”

A spell zipped past Sirius, sailing neatly over his shoulder, and struck the Death Eater, knocking him over a hillock and out of sight. Sirius glanced behind him, where Wade was standing with his wand still extended.

“Get her outta there!” he said, nodding at Rane. “Make it fast, we need to get out of here!”

“SIRIUS, what are you DOING here!?” Rane shrieked, stuffing her sword into its sheath and pulling her wand out. She was not even able to spare him a glance; ducking the first curse that was sent her way, she began to duel with the two Death Eaters who remained.

“Daddy come to save you?” a voice sneered from beneath one of the masks.

“Looks that way,” Rane replied through gritted teeth, ducking a Cruciatus curse smoothly.

“We need to get out of here!” Sirius was saying, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He had finally come to a skidding halt at her side, his wand out, already throwing curses towards the second Death Eater.

“I’m - a bit - busy - at the moment!” Rane gasped.

“CRUCIO!” one of the Death Eaters shrieked again, and Rane ducked once again.

“CRUCIO!” he screamed again, and yet another electric yellow bolt came for her. She leapt nimbly from its path, her eyes glittering.

“MISSED ME, YOU OLD FUCK!” Rane shouted, laughing madly.

“CRUCIO! CRUCIO! _CRUCIO!”_

The first two sailed over Rane’s and Sirius’s heads, striking the limbs above them with a loud crunch and a smell of ozone. The third struck Sirius squarely in the chest.

He had not been prepared for it; the sudden, paralyzing agony that lit up his body in a ricocheting network of pure anguish wiped all thought cleanly from his mind. He fell onto his side, screaming, his back arching helplessly, clutching at snow-covered sod beneath him in big, clawing chunks.

He felt Rane’s presence at his side, and from the corner of his peripheral vision he saw more spells coming from where the rest of the Order were fighting just a little ways behind them, but they wouldn’t be fast enough; he’d lost it, he’d lost this one for sure, he was finished . . .

And then, the woods around him lit up in bright, iridescent blue and white.

He craned his neck, shuddering. Rane stood next to him, surrounded in an aura of pulsing white light. Her eyes had gone from ruddy hazel to bright, icy blue, and she was staring at the Death Eaters before her with wild, unbridled focus. The one that had cursed Sirius - the left one, he thought - lifted his wand at last in his surprise, and Sirius was at once released from the hellish pain of the curse. He resisted the urge to drop onto his back in sheer relief, instead scrambling to his feet, snatching his wand up from the snow. He backed up a pace, his back touching the trunk of a tree, watching this unfold before him. Behind him, Dumbledore, Mad-Eye, Remus, Tonks, and Wade stood in sudden pause, their shadows long behind them.

The Death Eaters before Rane both began to shoot spells at her wildly, taking stumbling steps backwards, their faces long with terror. The spells seemed to fizzle into nothing before reaching her at all, however. And now, the wind was picking up around her, shaking the bows above her with sudden force, picking up the dusty snow in an eddy about her body. Though the violent gusts were powerful enough to stagger Tonks and Remus where they stood, the capsule of light around Rane seemed calm and trancelike, almost fluid; her hair floated in a gentle cloud about her head, and when she lifted one of her hands, it was almost lazily. She stared at the Death Eaters from beneath her brows, her eyes glowing fiercely like headlights in the growing dark. The very air seemed to thrum with some unseen, dangerous electricity that seemed to be blooming like a flower. Sirius later thought to himself that as he watched her floating there, the vortex of snow and pine needles spinning about her lean body and surrounded in undulating white light with her eyes blazing out like beacons, he could never remember being so utterly terrified of such a lovely sight.

The light around her suddenly burst out in a blinding flash, sending even the dark trees around them into white nothingness, and Sirius could feel the power of whatever it was pulsing in his eardrums and causing the very earth beneath him to tremble. The Death Eaters before Rane were thrown backwards unceremoniously; one landed against a tree trunk hard enough to knock him stupid, and the other was flung into a clumsy heap some five feet back, his wand landing point-down nearby. Neither of them moved.

“GET HER!” Sirius could hear Wade shouting, his voice lost in the pulse of the force around them. “STUN HER, SIRIUS! STUN HER! HURRY! BEFORE IT GETS BIGGER!”

Before Sirius could do anything, the light suddenly died, and Rane, whose feet, Sirius saw in amazement, had been hanging six inches from the ground, collapsed into a motionless heap, her wand tumbling from her fingers, her dark hair spilling around her on the snow.


	10. A Trip through the Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ylle Thalas opens its doors to the Death Eaters' victims

  
“RANE! _RANE!”_

Sirius’s ears were ringing. He felt shell-shocked. He remained motionless, his back against the rough bark of the tree, staring at Rane’s motionless form on the ground, blinking against the colorful afterimage of the brilliant light that had erupted from her that was suspended in his field of vision. He heard crunching footsteps, saw Wade running past him, dropping his wand and his sword into the snow as he went. Dumbledore was rushing forward too, his long white beard thrown over his shoulder, perhaps in the sudden, violent winds that had only just died away. Particles of dusty snow, displaced from the bows above them in the riotous whirlwind, were drifting downwards peacefully in silvery sheets, along with pine needles. Sirius could feel the icy cold of them as they hit his neck and forehead, melting at once.

“Sirius!”

A hand grasped Sirius’s bicep roughly, and he jumped, startled badly. Tonks stood there, a long gash across her forehead seeping blood almost as bright as her hair. A portion of her sleeve had been singed so badly that it was still smoking, leaving her forearm exposed to the chill. Remus was at her side, looking harried but uninjured.

“Are you alright?” Tonks asked him anxiously. “We saw them curse you, for a second we thought -”

“Fine,” Sirius heard himself saying, as if from far away. “I’m fine. Are you - are you both alright?”

“We’re alive, anyway,” said Remus, brushing his ruffled hair out of his eyes. “Mad-Eye’s been stunned, he’s unconscious but I think he’ll be alright . . .”

“Where’ve they gone to? The Death Eaters?”

“Disapparated,” said Dumbledore. He had come over to them; he was unharmed, but his brow was furrowed and he looked as shaken by what had just happened as Sirius felt. He was still grasping his wand, white-knuckled. “All but the two over there, of course. I surmise they shan’t pose any threat, however.”

Sirius glanced over Dumbledore’s shoulder, where he could see the two huddled forms of the Death Eaters that had been attacking Rane, motionless save for the breeze rippling the hems of their robes. The mask of the one who’d been thrown against the tree trunk had come off in the fray and lay glittering malignly in the snow at his side. Sirius couldn’t see his face well enough to be certain, but judging from the broad shoulders and dark hair strewn beneath him, he thought it might be Antonin Dolohov.

“Are any of you hurt?” Dumbledore was asking them briskly.

“No, we’re all okay,” said Tonks, “Nott got me in the face with something, it won’t stop bleeding, but we’re all alive, at least -”

“What _was_ that, Albus?” said Remus in a low voice, looking past Dumbledore’s shoulder towards where Wade was kneeling over Rane’s motionless form.

“Now is not the time,” said Dumbledore, shaking his head at once. “The Death Eaters we dispatched will be back very soon, and in greater numbers, to collect their fellows and to find us, I haven’t any doubt -”

Wade was jogging over to them. He, too, had escaped unscathed, but his long blonde hair was in disarray and as he approached them, he bent and retrieved his wand and his sword, holding one in each hand as if he expected to require their use at any second. Sirius saw with a jolt of disquiet that the shaft of his sword was stained red with someone’s blood, and wondered how the Death Eater on the receiving end of that had fared.

“You guys okay?” Wade asked them.

“Better than whoever it was met your sword,” said Tonks, following Sirius’s queasy gaze.

Wade looked down distractedly, then ran his blade through a bunch of his robes with practiced ease, as if bloodying his weapon was an everyday event. “Think it might have been Goyle. He’ll live, unfortunately, but he’ll have a hard time getting up staircases from now on . . .”

“What the bloody hell did she _do_ to them?” Tonks asked him. “I’ve never seen magic like that . . .”

Wade was shaking his head. “Wasn’t magic.”

"Why did you want me to Stun her?" Sirius asked Wade abruptly.

"Because if she hadn't zonked out one way or another, we all might be ashes and bone right now," said Wade hastily. "We're lucky she passed out, trust me."

"Ashes and bone?" Remus said, looking alarmed. "What -?"

"I'll explain later," said Wade, shaking his head at once. "Not here."

“Is she alive?” asked Sirius breathlessly. For the first time, he was acknowledging the terror he felt in the center of his chest - that Rane, motionless on the snow, may very well be dead. Perhaps a spell had gotten through to her, or whatever that massive thing had been had wiped out her life force when it dissipated. He realized abruptly that this, above all - that formless, horribly massive fear - had been what had caused him to hold his ground and not go to her at once, and he hated himself briefly for it.

Wade nodded his head, slightly breathless, looking as fearful as Sirius felt. “Yeah, but barely. Listen, we have to get out of here. Now. She needs help, and moreover, six of us won’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell when they come back with more to clean up -”

“Five,” Remus corrected him grimly. “Mad-Eye’s going to be useless for hours.”

“Back to headquarters?” asked Tonks, looking at Wade.

“No,” said Wade at once. “It’s too risky, we could be followed.”

“Ylle Thalas?” said Dumbledore, looking at him questioningly. Wade nodded once without hesitation.

“Ylle Thalas,” he agreed. “Nothing for it. Until the coast is clear, anyway.”

“What should we do with them?” said Remus, jerking his head towards the two unconscious Death Eaters.

“Leave them where they are,” said Dumbledore grimly. “Their master’s displeasure will be punishment enough for their failings tonight.”

“Can we Apparate?” asked Sirius dizzily. It felt as if things were happening far too quickly.

“They won’t like, but we’ve got no choice,” said Wade, peering backwards towards the form of his lifeless daughter, who lay still, the deep red sunset’s glow setting her black robes aflame. “It’s getting dark. You,” he said, nodding at Tonks, “might want to change that to something a bit more, uh . . . conservative.”

“Oh, honestly,” said Tonks, rolling her eyes, and screwed up her face. A second later, her pink, spiky hair had morphed into a deep red. “Better?”

“That’ll do,” said Wade absently. “Let’s get moving.”

Dumbledore turned and swept over to Rane, pointing his wand at her as he went. Her lean form rose into the air at once, raining down snow and pine needles, her head lolling bonelessly on her neck, and drifted towards them. The sheet of her dark hair rippled beneath her.

“Bloody hell,” said Sirius in a low voice, staring helplessly. “Just look at her.”

“The council will help her,” said Wade, but Sirius noted with a surge of worry that he was looking at Rane with the same expression of sick disquiet. “Tonks, Remus, will one of you get Mad-Eye? He won’t thank us for leaving him here with those two assholes to freeze to death -”

“Oh damn, I almost forgot about him!” Tonks remarked, and jogged into the clearing behind them. A moment later she reappeared, holding her wand aloft in one hand and clutching Mad-Eye’s gnarled staff in the other, Mad-Eye himself floating before her as motionless as Rane.

“Grab his arm, Remus,” she said as they drew near. “I’ve got his stupid staff, he can’t bring himself to leave home without it -”

They circled around Wade, who gripped Rane’s forearm tightly. Remus had taken hold of Mad-Eye’s peg-leg with his free hand, completing their circle.

“On three,” Wade said, raising his wand. “One . . . Two . . .”

Sirius didn’t hear the final count this time; with a loud POP, the seven of them vanished. The displaced snow swirled into an undulating eddy in their wake, and as it drifted back down, covering their footprints in its light dust, the clearing once more settled into silence, broken only by the uneven breathing of the cataleptic Dolohov and Malfoy.

  
WADE had misjudged their landing somewhat in his distraction, so when they arrived at the gates of Ylle Thalas, there was a good foot between their feet and the earth. Everyone tumbled to the snowy ground in heaps except Dumbledore, who landed gracefully on the heels of his boots. Rane and Mad-Eye, the spells holding them aloft broken, both came down too and each landed with a thud. Mad-Eye’s magical eye popped out, still swiveling madly hither and yon, and rolled through the snow towards Tonks.

“Oh, gross,” she yelped, eyeing the eyeball distastefully. “I dunno how to put it back in, I guess we’ll have to just carry it . . .”

Dumbledore lifted his wand, and Mad-Eye lifted lightly up once more, his magical eye now floating at his side, spinning about wildly, bits of snow still clinging to it. Tonks pointed her wand at Rane, meaning to do the same, but Sirius stopped her.

“No, no, let me,” he said in a low voice, kneeling where she’d fallen. He couldn’t stop himself from inspecting her, now that he was so near to her. She could have been sleeping; her face was perfectly relaxed and as lovely as ever, her lips slightly parted. He tenderly brushed aside the tendrils of hair, damp with melted snow, that were clinging to her cheeks, fighting the urge to bend and kiss her in spite of himself. He saw a long, angry red slash along her side for the first time, a graze so deep it had torn right through her robes, revealing her bare skin; the bleeding had slowed to a sluggish trickle, but her robes were stained and shining with it. He felt an almost overpowering surge of love for her, mingled with a deep, intense hatred for whoever had done this to her, a combination so potent he could feel the threatening sting of tears behind his eyes.

“Sirius, there’s no need -” Remus began.

“It is alright, Remus,” said Dumbledore simply.

Sirius was hardly listening to them. He scooped her up into his arms, and her head rolled limply against his chest, close to his heart. As he straightened, he was shocked at how light she felt, as if there were no substance to her at all.

“This way,” Wade said, brushing the snow off of his robes hurriedly and making for the gates.

The city of Ylle Thalas was easily the most incredible sight Sirius had ever clapped eyes on; in spite of his anxiety, he was awed by its grandeur. He had never seen an Elven city before, though his Defense Against the Dark Arts and History of Magic lessons at Hogwarts had given him enough to piece together that they were ancient, highly wrought structures unrivaled by any wizard- or muggle-made edifices of their ilk. The silver spires were intertwined with the very trees themselves, both so tall their peaks were lost in the clouds; ornately crafted gates circled the entirety, and glimmering purple and blue lights, shining like gentle beacons, glittered in the growing night. Among the fields that surrounded the city, half-concealed by the tall, gently swaying grass, horses grazed, their silky tails flicking idly, the surreal bluish light gleaming on their shining coats.

“It’s a bit like a dream, isn’t it?” said Tonks faintly, staring upwards, her mouth open.

“Ylle Thalas is among the oldest Elven capitals that remain,” said Dumbledore as they strode along behind Wade. He glanced around at Remus, Sirius and Tonks, his eyes twinkling behind his half-moon spectacles. “Count yourselves among the lucky few mortals to have born witness to it.”

“Don’t get too excited just yet,” said Wade from up ahead without turning. Sirius had a rather bizarre moment in which he remembered that Wade was an Elf, and therefore blessed with vastly sharp senses; it seemed at first that he was too far away to have heard anything Dumbledore had said at all. “I don’t know how they’re going to react to a bunch of wizards showing up at their door. And Rane isn’t very popular around here either, to be honest.”

“Not popular?” said Remus, sounding surprised. “I should think she’d be quite welcome, being one of them -”

“Ah,” said Wade, glancing around at him and lifting one finger. “But you’ve just hit the nail on the head, Remus . . . She _isn’t_ one of them. She’s _half_ one of them. And they aren’t crazy about half-breeds, any more than a lot of wizards are.”

“Well, if they don’t even like her, why in bloody hell don’t we just take her to St. Mungo’s?” asked Sirius impatiently. “If they turn her away -”

“They won’t turn her away,” said Wade, turning back towards the city. “Just - don’t expect a warm welcome.”

The stone-flagged steps leading to the innermost part of the city was guarded by two imposing sentinels, both of them wearing silver helmets that obscured their faces entirely. Each held their swords at the ready before their chests, and as Wade approached, he held a hand out to his companions behind them. They slowed, allowing him to stride forth.

He threw back his hood and spoke in a ringing voice in a lovely, rolling dialect.

“ _Im tul-with nin inafred. Ammen-mîn_.”

The sentinels exchanged a look. One of them lowered his sword.

“ _Varilterende, mîn ceri u’hen men_ ,” he replied gruffly. “ _Man are të_?”

“ _Te nur’oi moribund_ ,” Wade replied, sounding annoyed. “ _Me linne’te_.”

“ _I Aran na’u hen_ -” the other sentinel began, sounding dubious, but Wade cut him off.

“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” he said loudly, his accent growing more pronounced than ever in his frustration. “You see the state of us, don’t you? It’s twenty goddamned degrees below zero out here and we’ve had a real bitch of a night, alright? So what say we be gentlemen about this and stand down, eh? Please?”

The sentinels stood silently at this.

“Albus Dumbledore is welcome here, but who are these others?” said one at length, lifting a chin at Wade’s companions.

Sirius imagined they looked like quite a motley bunch; a werewolf and a metamorphmagus, a hollow-eyed convict wearing yesterday’s five o’clock shadow with a half-Elf in his arms who could very well be dead, and Mad-Eye, of course, with his wild hair hanging beneath his dangling head, his magical eye swiveling crazily at his side in midair. And all of them soaked with snow, filthy and bloodied, to boot.

“This is Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks,” said Wade, pointing to them each in turn. “The one floating behind them is Alastor Moody. Tonks and Moody are Aurors with the Ministry of Magic along with myself. That one there is Sirius Black, he’s a fellow member of the Order of the Phoenix, which you’ll be acquainted with.”

Sirius nodded, feeling very cognizant of the state of his hair.

“And that unconscious girl he’s carrying,” Wade went on impatiently, “is my daughter Rane, who happens to be of Elyfalume like you and me. She’s not doing well, as you can clearly see.”

“Does she live?” asked one of the sentinels.

“For now,” said Wade. “Ask me again in about twenty minutes, I might have a different answer for you.”

Sirius felt a sharp pang of terror at these words. He shifted his weight, staring at the two Elves blockading their road. He wished badly that they would get out of the way. At his side, Dumbledore had remained markedly and dutifully silent, his hands behind his back, inspecting the architecture with apparent fascination and allowing Wade to do all the talking.

“Why do you bring these Men to our gates?” a sentinel asked, sounding superbly disdainful. “You know the laws of our land, _Varilterende.”_

“We were attacked by Voldemort’s followers tonight,” Wade explained, still looking impatient. “My daughter and Tonks gave chase. We haven’t got anywhere else to go, and two of us are hurt. We came for help.”

The sentinels exchanged a glance. Then, at last, they stepped aside.

“You may pass,” said one of them. “But proceed cautiously, _Varilterende.”_

“Much obliged,” said Wade curtly, striding past them without a glance. Dumbledore bowed graciously to each of them in turn, a gesture they both returned. Neither of them acknowledged

Sirius, Remus, Tonks, or Mad-Eye’s floating form, however.

The city’s interior was even more gorgeous. Wade seemed to know it well; he strode directly through a tall hallway made of some smooth white stone, ascending a marble stairway. Sirius noticed Remus limping slightly as they made their way after him; it seemed he hadn’t fully escaped injury, after all.

“What did they say?” Tonks asked Wade curiously. “I’ve never heard Sindarin before, it’s quite lovely . . .”

“They wanted to know what I was doing turning up with a bunch of mortals,” said Wade. He glanced behind him, looking apologetic. “Sorry, a bunch of _wizards,_ rather. You heard they could speak perfectly good English, they were just being rude. Bunch of bad-manners-having blowhards if you ask me,” he muttered.

Sirius had begun to feel a bit winded and he could feel his heart thumping quickly in his chest when they finally reached a large set of stone doors. Wade turned to them.

“Y’all wait outside,” he instructed. “I’ll be right back.”

He had vanished through the doors before anyone could protest, and they shut with a grinding thud behind him, leaving the six of them in the dreamlike, dimly lit bluish-white darkness. Crickets chirruped cheerily in the forest around them, startlingly loud. Sirius could hear the faint whinnying of a horse nearby.  
Dumbledore placed two long fingers against Rane’s throat, held them there a moment, and then drew back, clasping his hands in his sleeves and peering up at the double stone doors long-sufferingly. Sirius waited for him to say something.

“Well?” he said after a moment, unable to bear this silence.

“She is alive,” said Dumbledore without looking at him. Sirius could see the trancelike lights reflecting on his glasses in the dim. “She is weak, however.”

“How’s Mad-Eye?” said Tonks.

Remus inspected him briefly. “He’s fine,” he pronounced a moment later. “Just knocked out. He’ll come round.”

Wade reemerged from the doorway, now flanked by the most beautiful woman Sirius had ever seen. She was clad in a flowing white gown with long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes; on her head rested a delicate tiara that seemed to be made of interwoven green and silver. She swept past Wade gracefully, her eyes resting on the pack of bedraggled wizards before her, and bowed her head.

“Welcome to Ylle Thalas,” she said. Her voice was husky, sweet and strong.

“Iliwynn,” said Dumbledore, inclining his head at her. “Looking as lovely as ever, I see.”

“Peace you, Albus Dumbledore,” said Iliwynn, giving him a wry smile that seemed to light up the dim corridor. She turned her eyes on the rest of them; Remus and Tonks were both staring at this lovely creature with the same gape-mouthed awe that Sirius was. Only Wade and Dumbledore seemed to have their wits firmly about them.

“I am Iliwynn,” she said. “I am sovereign of this city. _Varilterende_ tells me you were fallen upon by Death Eaters this eve, and on our very lands.”

“So we were indeed,” Dumbledore agreed. He alone seemed to have retained the ability to speak. “We made it mostly unscathed, but as you can see, two of our number need attention. I hope we haven’t been too presumptuous to seek your aid.”

“Never in life,” said Iliwynn graciously. “This is wartime, after all, and we fight for the same cause, if not for the same banner. Please.”

She gestured towards the room that she and Wade had just exited, and the group of them moved into its warmth gratefully.

AN hour later found Sirius sitting anxiously by a bed near a large window overlooking the forest below, where he could see the shining coats of the horses grazing in the fields. It had begun to snow lightly, and some of them, seemingly delighted by this meteorological development, were frolicking merrily, bucking and galloping.  
Across the large room, which seemed to be something like a vast hospital ward, Mad-Eye had been given a cot, where he was currently either fast asleep or still knocked out from the Stunning Spell, Sirius wasn’t sure which. His magical eye had been deposited into a crystal goblet of water on the windowsill, where it was rotating wildly here and there as usual.  
Remus and Tonks had fallen asleep quite unabashedly wrapped around one another in another bed, forehead to forehead, the woven green Elven blanket pulled nearly to their ears regardless of the fire roaring in the corner. Remus’s obvious concern when he’d first arrived at Grimmauld Place, which Sirius had taken to be for Rane, had actually been for Tonks. He felt a bit foolish for missing it, truth be told; how long had they been this way? He didn’t know. Not long, he thought; it wasn’t like Remus to so readily accept affection like this. If history had anything to teach, Tonks had a rocky road ahead of her if she meant to pursue this. Regardless, it did his heart some good to see them that way, so obviously happy. Remus deserved it. So did Tonks, for that matter. A good pairing, he thought. A small light in the darkness that was this blossoming war.

Dumbledore and Wade had vanished with Iliwynn shortly after they’d arrived, presumably to speak alone, and Sirius couldn’t have cared less where they went or why. The only thing he cared about right now lay beneath a white sheet before him, silent and still. Sirius had taken to watching the gentle rise and fall of Rane’s chest. Occasionally he reached out and stroked her hair with infinite tenderness, so gentle it was as if he feared she would shatter. One of her limp hands was clasped in his own, his fingers woven through hers, his thumb stroking hers tenderly.

He had been this way for what must have been an hour when a voice spoke behind him, making him jump and stare around.

“You love her.”

Iliwynn stood there, her hands clasped before her, smiling down at Sirius.

“Blimey, I didn’t hear you come in,” Sirius said, unable to conceal his surprise.

Iliwynn smiled more brilliantly than ever, taking a seat opposite Sirius on the other side of Rane’s bed.

“I s’pose that’s just what Elves do though, right?” Sirius went on, smiling tentatively.

“Indeed,” said Iliwynn, her eyes dancing. “We can avoid being seen or heard when we wish it.”

Sirius looked down at Rane again, and sighed deeply.

“I do love her, yeah,” he said. “I dunno if her dad knows, but after tonight I reckon he’d have to be an idiot not to realize it.”

Iliwynn simply smiled at him. If anyone else had smiled at Sirius this much all at once, he’d have felt suspicious or even a little unnerved; this Elven woman, though, seemed to radiate simple goodness, and he found himself feeling quite relaxed in her presence. It was as if she gave off serenity the way a fire gave off heat.

“I dunno if it’ll be okay between us in the end,” Sirius told her, not knowing quite why he was saying this. “I dunno . . . I dunno if I can give her what she needs.”

“You doubt yourself, Sirius Black,” said Iliwynn. “I think it unwise of you. She loves you, too.”

“How do you know that?”

Iliwynn turned her brilliant eyes down towards Rane. One of her hands rose, stroked Rane’s hair from her face gently.

“Love leaves a mark,” she said at length, her voice soft, “for those who look.”

Sirius waited for an explanation to this strange sentiment, but Iliwynn seemed to be finished.

“Something . . . Something strange happened to her tonight,” Sirius said suddenly. He wasn’t sure why he was saying this to Iliwynn, either; he had no reason to believe she would know or care what he spoke of. “There was light, and her eyes changed . . . it was like she had this power, and it just exploded out of her . . . It felt _dangerous_ . . . ”

Iliwynn turned her eyes back to Sirius, sitting back in her chair. Her gaze was suddenly troubled. The change was dramatic; Sirius could feel the chill of her anxiety like a pall draping over him. His skin broke out in gooseflesh.

“I know what it was you and your friends saw tonight,” said Iliwynn quietly.

“I think Wade knows about it,” Sirius said haltingly. “He told me to Stun her.”

“He knows. And he was right to tell you such a thing.”

“So you’re saying I _should_ have Stunned her?” Sirius asked her, slightly bewildered. “What if I’d hurt her, or -?”

“You cannot hurt her, Sirius Black,” said Iliwynn slowly. “No man can.”

Sirius fell silent at this bewildering statement, staring at her, at a loss for words. Iliwynn watched Sirius for a moment in silence. She seemed to be sizing him up. The blue fairy-lights of Ylle Thalas played about her face, turning her lovely visage momentarily corpselike.

“Would you know, then, the truth of this woman?” she said at length.

Another silence fell between them. Sirius wasn’t sure what to say. The hand that clutched Rane’s tightened.

“Of course I would,” he said.

Iliwynn sighed with a profound sadness, turning her eyes back to Rane once more.

“Twenty-five years ago,” she began, her voice soft and lovely, _“Varilterende_ was wed to a human woman, against the wishes of his people. He was cast away, for no Elf shall court a mortal; such is the law of our kind, and has been for aeons out of mind. He became a pariah amongst us, and remained so for many years. Do your kind exile, Sirius Black?”

Sirius, who knew exile better than anyone, nodded.

 _“Varilterende’s_ wife was treacherous, as so many mortals are,” Iliwynn went on. “She renounced him, and he returned to Elyfalume in despair and took up his sword and served his kind as his name evokes - _Varilterende,_ the unbreakable guardian. So he has served us, and served wizard kind, a sentry between two worlds. And it seemed that all was as it should be.”

Sirius sat rapt. The fire flickered benignly in the corner. The snow fell endlessly outside.

“But it was not to be,” Iliwynn went on. “For _Varilterende’s_ wife bore a daughter. But how could such a thing be?”

She looked at Sirius frankly.

“She is the only one. The only one that ever may be.”

“You mean, a half-Elf?” asked Sirius.

“Do you call her so?” Iliwynn said, smiling wanly. “We call her _Peredhil,_ quasi-immortal; she who was not born to die.”

“She’s . . . she’s immortal?” Sirius breathed.

“There are none who know,” said Iliwynn. “Not even the wisest can tell such a thing. We only know of Peredhil that she is powerful beyond any Elf, and beyond any Man. She has the power to create, and the power to destroy. Mayhap she will destroy everything. That she could, were it her pleasure, I have no doubt, Sirius Black.”

Sirius looked down at Rane, her face placid, the gentle rise and fall of her breath regular beneath the sheet she lay under. He couldn’t see her destroying anything right now, certainly . . . She was peaceful, beautiful. He loved her, fiercely.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” said Sirius.

Iliwynn looked at him with some surprise. “Have I not?”

Sirius stared at her.

“She possesses great power,” Iliwynn said quietly, meeting his eyes steadily, “and there exists not a soul this day on our earth or beyond it that understands it. Not you, nor I, nor her.” She nodded towards Rane. “You saw that power tonight, when she saw the man she loves in danger. I believe that through learning of the width and breadth of her capabilities, she is discovering that she can do harm to herself as well.”

Sirius opened his mouth, feeling a rush of panic, but Iliwynn spoke over him, smiling warmly at him once again.

“Do not let yourself be troubled,” she said. “She will wake. Tonight, tomorrow - I know not. But that she will wake, I have no doubt. And her control will have grown greater for it. Though for better or for worse remains to be seen.”

The doors opened, and Dumbledore and Wade strode back in before Iliwynn could say more. She and Sirius turned to them.

“How is she?” said Wade, striding to the foot of Rane’s bed. “Anything?”

“You should rest, Varilterende,” said Iliwynn. She had risen smoothly from where she had sat opposite Sirius, and now she swept a hand towards Remus and Tonks, who were still fast asleep. “Ylle Thalas will keep you and your friends safe this night.”

Wade looked as if he were about to protest, but Dumbledore bowed graciously to Iliwynn before he could speak.

“We would appreciate nothing more than your hospitality tonight, my dear Iliwynn,” he said politely. “I do hope we are not imposing.”

“Never in life,” said Iliwynn, her eyes sparkling. “I hope you shall find our city most restful.”

She looked between Wade, Dumbledore and Sirius, and sunk into a brief bow.

“And now, friends, I must retire,” she said. “The hour grows late. Until we meet again.”

And with this, she swept from the room and out the double doors they’d entered through, closing them gently behind her.

“Lovely, isn’t she?” said Dumbledore fondly, staring after her. “I rather understand why she’s so highly regarded.”

“It was awfully nice of her to let us stay,” said Wade. He looked exhausted. “At least we can keep an eye on Rane and Mad-Eye. Looks like Remus and Tonks have made themselves right at home.”

“So they have,” said Dumbledore, looking over at them, his eyes twinkling.

“Sirius, how about a quick word before we turn in?” said Wade, looking down at Sirius.

Sirius looked up at him, then back down at Rane, reluctant to leave her.

“She’s not going to fly away,” said Wade. “I promise.”

“And if she tries to, I shall be sure to prevent it,” Dumbledore added, smiling.

Sirius hesitated only briefly before rising and following Wade out. He opened a pair of doors across the room from the stairway, leading onto a half-circle balcony that overlooked what must have been miles of woodland far below. The snow was falling now in big, fluffy sheafs, coating the world below in a growing blanket of white. Sirius listened for a moment to that peaceful silence that only accompanies a snowy evening, relishing the chilly air on his face, before turning to Wade, who was shutting the door gently behind him.  
Wade stood there for a second in front of the now-closed doors, his arms folded across his chest, the breeze picking up tendrils of his long hair. Sirius was very aware of the sword, which had already tasted blood this evening, hanging at his belt. The two men regarded each other in silence.

“Sirius,” said Wade, and spread his hands. “You saw this coming. You must have.”

“Of bloody course I saw it coming,” said Sirius.

“What’s the deal, man?” said Wade. He folded his arms again. “Do I need to ask, or are you just going to tell me?”

“Tell you -?”

“Yes, Sirius, tell me,” said Wade impatiently. “I’ve spent most of the evening with the two of you, and for most of that Rane wasn’t even conscious, and I can still tell something’s going on. I mean, it couldn’t be more obvious if it was written on your forehead. So, yes. I’d like to get the lowdown on this. As a father, you understand.”

Sirius sighed, rubbing his unshaven face for a second with both hands.

“It’s been a few months now,” he said at last, dropping his hands to his sides.

“A few months.”

“Yes. Since the summer.”

Wade looked at Sirius for a few more moments from beneath his eyebrows.

“Are you going to run me through?” Sirius asked, smirking.

“Not yet, but don‘t get too comfortable,” said Wade pensively. He shifted his weight, pointing at Sirius with one finger. “You know, if I didn’t know you, I’d be as pissed off as housecat in a hogtie right about now.”

“Because I’m a convict,” said Sirius.

“But I do know you,” Wade went on. “And I know you’re a decent guy. Little hot-headed, little bit reckless . . . Bit of a fat head on you back when you were younger -”

“Hey, hey -”

“But mostly, a decent guy. And I know you’ll treat her well. And I can tell you love her, and I’m willing to bet she loves you too.”

Sirius nodded. “Absolutely.”

Wade peered critically at Sirius for another moment.

“You’re gonna do right by her,” he said, inclining his head towards Sirius. “Right?”

“I’d die for her,” said Sirius, surprising them both into silence.

Wade looked at him, his eyebrows high. Then he reached out and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Well, let’s hope it never comes to that,” he said, and offered him a lopsided grin.

“Let’s,” Sirius agreed.

“Come on, let’s go take advantage of those beds,” said Wade, turning to the door. “I’m beat.”  
Sirius followed him inside. Dumbledore was inspecting the chandelier hanging above them with what Sirius thought was contrived curiosity; he had no doubt that Albus had heard their entire conversation. The man didn’t miss a trick.

“I believe that our remaining here tonight is our best course of action,” said Dumbledore as they approached. “I hope you’ll not be too inconvenienced by it.”

“There are plenty of beds,” said Wade, looking around, stifling a yawn. “Take your pick.”

A moment later, Dumbledore and Wade were moving towards the far end of the room, choosing beds. Sirius hesitated only briefly before deciding where he would remain.

He nudged Rane over gently, set his wand on the windowsill nearby, and crawled into bed beside her. She was warm, her breathing gentle and regular, and he pressed his body into her back, wrapping his arms around her tightly, relishing the sensation of her heart beating gently against his hand.  
He buried his face in her fragrant hair, and in moments he was asleep as the snow swirled outside.

 


	11. Rane Tosses her Cookies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our bedraggled heroes return to Grimmauld Place at last, some happier than others

Sirius opened his eyes.

He was staring up at a clean, white marble ceiling. The broad room was awash in the thin, pink half-light of early dawn. He was warm beneath a thick woven Elven blanket, and for a moment he wished only to drift off again, so profound was his comfort. He shut his eyes again, reaching out for Rane’s warm body, wanting her closeness.  
But his fingertips touched only the cool sheet there, and his eyes sprung open once more. He turned to where Rane had lay beside him all night, but she was gone, the sheet thrown aside, the pillow still indented with the shape of her head.

Sirius sat up, looking around, experiencing a moment of panic. Across the room, his companions slept on heedlessly; Remus and Tonks, together in one bed, the tops of their heads only just visible over the covers, Mad-Eye snoring lightly in a corner, one arm dangling, Wade huddled into a silent comma evident only by the crown of his head. Only Dumbledore was unaccounted for; the bed he’d occupied was neatly made and empty.

 _She died in the night_ , Sirius thought wildly _, they took her away, and I slept right through it, she’s lying on a cold stone slab someplace being readied for the ground, or_ -

But then his eyes fell on the door leading to the balcony where Wade had accosted him the night before, and he released an involuntary, whistling sigh of respite. Snow had wafted in where it had been left ajar. Outside, he could see Rane’s lean figure, standing with her arms wrapped around herself, the wind playing with the ends of her hair. She was staring out at the sunrise motionlessly.

Sirius went to the balcony, hesitating before the doorway, staring out at her there. He could see her profile in the growing, rosy light; she was staring at the horizon, and the crescent of the sun cast its fiery countenance across her face. Her eyebrows were drawn down in a moue of some distant expression Sirius couldn’t place. She had taken off her robe, leaving it in a pile near the doors, and stood in jeans and a t-shirt despite the morning chill. Below her, the land was covered in a blanket of glistening snow.

Sirius pushed the door open.

“Rane?”

She turned her head very slightly, as if listening to him, but she didn’t face him. Sirius reached a hand towards her, then hesitated, as if afraid he would break her.

“Are you alright?” he asked her softly.

A gust of wind, bitterly cold, swept across the balcony, throwing her hair wildly about her shoulders. Sirius wrapped his robes more tightly about him, crossing his arms, his shoulders huddled.

“Rane,” Sirius repeated quietly.

“I’m sorry,” said Rane, her voice all but lost in the whistling wind.

Sirius watched the back of her head in silence.

“I could have killed you,” said Rane. Sirius saw her shake her head minutely. “Or myself. Or Ylle Thalas. Or the whole fucking world.”

The sound of crows calling to one another echoed up from the forest below, harsh and faint.

“I should have told you,” said Rane. “I should have told you months ago. It’s . . . it’s dangerous, when it comes out like that, sometimes. And I don’t know how to control it, it’s so _huge_ . . . And when Dolohov cursed you, I was _so angry_ -”

“Look, I don’t care,” said Sirius, the wind throwing tendrils of his long hair about his face. “I’m just glad you’re -”

“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” said Rane in a sudden rush.

Sirius felt as if the bottom of his stomach had dropped out. Rane had leaned forward, her shoulders rounded, gripping the ledge of the balcony, still not looking at him.

“Are you _joking?”_ said Sirius at last, his voice faint, looking at her back incredulously.

“No,” said Rane, very low.

“Turn around and say it to my face, then,” said Sirius. His heart was beating much too hard.

Rane turned to him, so that Sirius could at last see her eyes, which were bloodshot and bright. The irises had returned to their usual hazel once again; in the growing morning light they seemed preternaturally vivid.

“We can’t,” said Rane, barely above a whisper. “I can’t. We shouldn’t have -”

“Shouldn’t have _what,_ exactly?” said Sirius, his voice very loud in the calm morning. He didn’t care if he woke up Remus and Tonks, or Wade, or Mad-Eye. Truthfully he didn’t care much about anything. “What shouldn’t we have done, Rane?”

Rane was looking at Sirius with a desperate expression on her face, her eyes bright.

“Sirius, do you _understand_ what happened last night?” she said. “You can’t, you just _can’t_ know what it means, the implications -”

“No, I think it’s _you_ that doesn’t understand,” said Sirius. His voice was strident and trembling. He felt nauseous. He thumped himself on the chest. “Do you _know_ what it took for me to open up to you? Because I don’t think _you_ understand. Do you?”

Rane’s lips were pursed as she looked at him, her eyebrows knitted together, her eyes shining with tears. She nodded.

“No!” said Sirius loudly, leveling one finger at her. “No, you _fucking_ \- don’t! I spent _twelve years_ alone in Azkaban! TWELVE BLOODY YEARS! And two more in the wild, eating rats and living in caves! If I had known you were going to piss off on me halfway through because of some half-cooked bullshit about how dodgy you are, I would have told you to fuck right _off_ that night you found me outside at headquarters!”

And now the tears were streaming down her face, and the rage and hurt Sirius felt was mingling now with shame, and what a lovely mix that was turning out to be.

“You’re running out on me,” said Sirius. “I don’t believe it.”

“I’m not running out on -”

“What is it you’re doing, then?”

“It isn’t safe for you to be with me, it’s _dangerous,_ no one knows what I’m capable of, even I don’t -”

“Oh, of bloody well _course_ it’s dangerous, Rane!” Sirius shouted. “This is war! _Everything_ is dangerous! It’s dangerous to go to the end of your drive to pick up the paper these days! I’m not going to stop loving you because it’s _dangerous_ for me -!”

“What if I hurt you?” said Rane. “What then? What if I _kill_ you?”

“What if you put a gun to my head, you mean?” said Sirius roughly. “What if you Avada Kedavra me off the balcony right now? I suppose I’ll be dead, then, won’t I -!”

“You know very goddam well what I mean -!”

“I’m willing to take my own fucking risks, thank you very much!” yelled Sirius, and now tears were welling up in his own eyes. “And I think it should be me that decides which chances I take and which I don’t, if it’s all the same to you!”

They stood staring at each other, breathing hard, then Rane turned again to stare off into the morning sky, her shoulders shaking gently. Sirius swiped at his eyes.

“You’re a bloody coward, is what you are,” he said in a low voice.

Rane whirled around, her hair flying, her eyes suddenly burning.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!” she shouted. Suddenly she seemed very tall, very potent. “SHOULD I JUST BE COOL WITH THE POSSIBILITY THAT I MIGHT BURN YOU UP LIKE A MATCH ONE DAY?”

“YES!” Sirius roared.

“WELL I’M NOT COOL WITH IT! I’M NOT!” Rane bellowed back at him. Her eyes were streaming. “I LOVE YOU, SIRIUS! I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU LIKE THAT!”

“SO YOUR SOLUTION IS TO DITCH ME, THEN? WHERE THE BLOODY HELL IS THE LOGIC IN THAT?”

Rane covered her face with both of her hands, her fingers digging into her forehead, her eyes tightly shut. Sirius was breathing hard.

“Everything alright?” said a voice from behind them.

Sirius turned, looking harassed. Remus stood there, one hand on the door, looking at the two of them

“Yeah, everything’s brilliant,” said Sirius in a low voice.

Remus looked from Rane, who had taken her hands away from her face and was hastily wiping at her cheeks with the heels of her hands, to Sirius, damp-eyed and red-faced, his hands on his hips.

“We’ll be leaving for headquarters shortly,” he said. “Do you need a moment?”

“No,” said Rane shortly, brushing past Sirius and Remus.

Remus turned back to Sirius, who was watching Rane’s form diminish into the broad wing. Before he could begin to form another question, however, Sirius had followed suit, striding into the broad room with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

 

WADE, Dumbledore and Iliwynn were standing in a circle near the entryway, speaking in low voices, when Sirius entered the room. Rane was bent over near the bed she and Sirius had shared and was pulling her boots on, her back to the rest of them. Tonks was sitting Indian-style in bed, blinking in the morning light and looking groggy, her untidy hair a vivid navy blue this morning. Mad-Eye had at last awoken; he was standing next to Remus, furiously scrubbing his magical eye on his robes.

“You lot ready?” said Wade. He had tamed his long blond hair into a knot at the nape of his neck this morning.

“Are we sure it’s safe?” asked Sirius, clearing his throat and doing his best at looking relatively put together. “No Death Eaters hanging around?”

“Iliwynn was kind enough to dispatch sentinels this morning to ensure we were not followed,” said Dumbledore. “It seems our display last night was enough to frighten them away for the time being.”

“Thank you for everything, Iliwynn,” said Tonks, who had at last gotten up. “Best I’ve slept in months.”

“I hope your journey is without incident,” said Iliwynn, looking at Dumbledore. “We shall be on alert for any signs of your assailants.”

“You’ve been most gracious,” said Dumbledore, bowing slightly to her and smiling.

Rane joined them at last, pulling her cloak on. Her eyes were still red, but she was looking determinedly at the floor, stuffing her wand into her pocket, her mouth turned into a frown.

“How you feeling, girl?” Wade asked her. He was looking at her carefully, and Sirius had no doubt that he had heard their row on the balcony.

“Alive,” Rane replied quietly. “Thanks, Iliwynn.”

“Everyone ready?” said Mad-Eye, approaching them with his wand out. He had at last reinserted his magical eye. Sirius felt a shudder of gratitude for this fact; the sight of that empty socket was unsettling. “The sooner the better . . . it’s shifty enough as it is, all of us disappearing for a whole night . . .”

“I doubt anyone will have noticed our absence yet,” said Remus, “but I suspect it’s wise to be cautious and get back to headquarter, those of us employed by the Ministry in particular.”

“Can’t say I’ve minded getting a bit of fresh air, in any case,” said Sirius truthfully.

“Not a risk I’d have taken, myself, but to each his own,” Mad-Eye muttered.

“Right well, shut yourself up for six months in your mum’s house and let me know how _you_ fare, mate,” Sirius snapped.

Mad-Eye looked a bit taken aback at this curt reply, but Sirius paid him no mind. He was in no mood for manners.

“Doesn’t hurt to be careful, you know,” Mad-Eye replied gruffly, “it’s saved my life many times, I suspect anyone would -”

“Give it a break, Mad-Eye, for the love of god,” said Rane wearily. “Come on, let’s get going.”

“Blimey, did everyone wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?” Mad-Eye murmured, looking mildly affronted, but he raised his wand and put his forearm out nonetheless.

“Send word if you see them,” said Wade, looking at Iliwynn. She inclined her head.

“Get on with it,” said Rane, still looking at the floor, grasping Mad-Eye‘s forearm.

 _“Apparatio!”_ Mad-Eye bellowed, and with a loud POP all of them had departed Ylle Thalas at last, mercifully intact.

 

KINGSLEY was wandering from room to room shouting for Sirius when they arrived back in the dingy livingroom of Grimmauld Place; Rane could hear his booming voice somewhere in the vicinity of the second landing.

“Down here, Kingsley!” Remus shouted, breaking apart from the cluster.

A moment later, Kingsley’s bald head appeared over the railing.

“Where in the blue blazes have you all _been?”_ he said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for half an hour, I thought Sirius had run off on us -”

“Well you weren’t wrong,” said Mad-Eye fairly as Kingsley descended the stairway. “Rane and Tonks had a lovely evening getting hexed at by Death Eaters, the rest of us decided to drop in and clean up a bit -”

“ _Death Eaters_?” said Kingsley, looking stunned. “What -?”

“Shall we discuss the excitement of the evening over breakfast?” Dumbledore suggested. “I, for one, am quite famished . . .”

“Ooh, yes, let’s!” Tonks agreed enthusiastically. “Remus makes a really excellent mushroom omelet, you know . . .”

Sirius, meanwhile, was already slouching off towards the basement kitchen, looking thoroughly indifferent. As Dumbledore, Mad-Eye, Remus and Tonks walked into the dining room with Kingsley, Mad-Eye already launching into the debriefing of the night’s events, Rane stared at his retreating back, her stomach in knots.

“You know, when I ask you something like ‘how are you feeling,’ you’re more than welcome not to bullshit me,” said Wade at her side.

She looked at him quickly, having nearly forgotten him in her apprehension. He stood looking at her, his brow knitted, pulling off his cloak slowly, one arm at a time.

“What’s going on between the two of you?” Wade asked her frankly.

Rane eyed him in trepidation. “Dad . . .”

“Come on, I’m not stupid, you spent a good bit of the morning shouting each other down thirty feet away from the rest of us,” Wade said. “I’m an Elf, I hear everything. Whether I want to or not.”

“You know about . . . Well, us?” Rane asked him, not really surprised.

Wade sighed. “I had a good talk with Sirius last night, yeah. He’s a good guy. I gave him my blessing.”

Rane sat down on the couch heavily. “I broke up with him.”

Wade sat beside her. “Now why would you go and do a stupid ass thing like that?” he asked her bluntly.

This candid pronouncement, meanwhile, _did_ surprise Rane.

“Jesus _Christ,_ dad, how about a little goddamn support? ‘Why would I go and do a stupid ass thing like that?’ Really?”

“Well,” said Wade, “it was a stupid ass thing to do, Rane.”

“Dad, y’know . . .” Rane drew her hands down her face, groaning. “I shouldn’t be with _anyone_ in that capacity. I’m dangerous. You saw what I did last night. You know what my situation is.”

“You’re learning to control it.”

“Yes, maybe I am, but all it takes is one time when I _can’t_ control it, and Sirius is dead,” said Rane. _“Dead._ Then I’d have to live with myself.”

“You aren’t going to kill anyone with this unless you set about to do it,” said Wade.

“But how do you _know_ that, though?” Rane asked him desperately. “You’ve seen it before, you know how big it is -!”

“Because you aren’t a nuclear bomb,” said Wade firmly. “And you’ve never done it before, moreover. Not even when you were a kid, and you didn’t know what it was. You blew out some windows a couple times, sure, and there was that time you set all the car alarms off in the neighborhood, but you never hurt anyone.”

“It’s different now, it’s like it’s blossoming -”

“Look,” Wade cut her off sternly. “I like Sirius. Always have, right from when he was first inducted into the order, back when he was a twenty-year-old blowhard getting up to shenanigans with Remus and James and being drooled over by girls left and right -”

“Girls, what girls?” said Rane, looking askance at her father.

“. . . He’s smart, he’s a talented wizard,” Wade went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “he’s a great looking guy as I’m sure you’ve noticed . . . ‘course he’s got his bad points, sure, just like you do . . . For one thing he’s a bit high strung and I personally think he’s got a case of arrested development from his time in Azkaban,” he added, looking apologetic. “But he loves the shit out of you. He does. I can tell he does.”

Rane hung her head.

“So why don’t you just accept that, for a change, instead of pushing him away because you’re chickenshit?” said Wade, giving her a lopsided grin.

“I’m not chickenshit!” said Rane, giving him an affronted look.

“Oh, you’re not?” Wade said, smirking. “How many of your boyfriends have I met over these past two or three years?”

“Shit, I dunno,” Rane said, shaking her head. “Like five? Six, maybe?”

Wade held up two fingers. “Two. Do you know how long they hung around?”

Rane rolled her eyes. “Dad -”

 _“Maybe_ six months together. And both of them, both of them told me the same damn thing about you - that you were -”

Wade stuck his hands into his armpits and flapped his elbows once.

“- chickenshit,” he finished. “Wouldn’t even commit to the damn thing. No wonder they both hit the pavement before a year had gone by.”

“Fuck those guys,” Rane muttered, folding her arms. “I’m not chickenshit . . .”

“Look,” said Wade, clutching her shoulder. “Give him a chance. Okay? Don’t run away.”

“I don’t want to hurt him, dad . . .”

“Well, that’s his choice to risk it, and not yours,” said Wade. “You can’t protect the people you love, as much as you might want to. You gotta take some chances sometimes.”

Rane looked at him, her brows knitted.

“Give the guy a chance,” said Wade. “Give yourself a chance, while you’re at it. If he knows the risks and he still loves you, you gotta let him do it. Alright?”

Rane took a deep breath and let it out.

“Ugh,” she murmured. “God this shit is hard.”

“Just quit being such a goddamn chickenshit and enjoy your life a little bit, you damn stick in the mud,” said Wade, getting up. “I gotta go get in on this. Go talk him down, make it right. Bagawwww . . . “

Rane pointed her wand at his diminishing butt. “I’ve got the perfect shot, you better hurry your ass up and get into that kitchen . . .”

He had vanished into the dining room, where Rane could hear the muffled sound of Dumbledore explaining to Kingsley what had happened that prior night. She remained where she was for a moment, thinking, then rose to her feet and strode toward the basement kitchen.

Sirius wasn’t in there, but one of the cupboards was hanging ajar and a bottle of firewhiskey was opened on the counter. He had not even bothered to replace the cork, and he’d slopped some of it onto the countertop. Rane looked at this for a moment, then reached into the cupboard, removed a goblet, and poured herself a hefty carafe of the reddish liquid. She downed half of it in a go, relishing the hearty heat that blossomed in her chest, and shut her eyes for a moment, gripping the side of the counter, her hair hanging in her face. Then, with resolve anew, she turned toward the patio door, where the morning sun had cast the Black family logo in the glass into foggy resolution. She could see Sirius’s form out there, just where she’d met him so many months before.

She slid open the door, clutching her firewhiskey. Sirius was slouched in the chair there, one hand clutching an already mostly emptied glass; between the first two fingers of the other hand dangled a cigarette, oozing a thin stream of smoke idly toward the chilly morning sky, where fat snow clouds were blooming.

“Can I join you?” she asked tentatively.

Sirius grunted, shrugging, not looking around at her.

Rane sat in the chair at his side, curling her legs underneath her Indian-style as she so often did, setting her glass on the arm. For a moment she didn’t say anything, only looked out across the snowy courtyard. A few snowflakes, barely perceptible, were floating idly downwards now, perhaps the same system that had dumped inches upon inches onto Ylle Thalas the night before.

“Smoke?” said Sirius, lifting his own up into the air a bit, still staring broodingly out at the trees.

“With pleasure.”

He pulled the now-crumpled pack from his robes pocket, shook one out, lit it with the tip of his wand, offered it butt-first to her without looking at her. She took it gratefully, drew long and sighed with relief on her exhale.

They sat in silence for a few more moments, smoking.

“I love you, Sirius,” said Rane, very quietly.

“Hmm,” Sirius murmured. His voice had already picked up a hint of fuzz from the firewhiskey. “Funny way of showing it.”

“I know,” Rane replied, looking down at her cigarette. “I’m sorry. For . . . For being this way.”

Sirius grunted again and took a draw from his cigarette, blowing it towards the sky in a long thin stream.

“I want to be with you,” she said. “If you . . . You know, want me.”

Sirius glanced over at her at last, his eyes as red as she felt certain hers were.

“’Course I want you,” he said. “Are you mad?”

“I just need you to know,” said Rane, leaning towards him slightly, “that this thing, this _thing_ I’ve got, I don’t -”

“I wouldn’t give a bloody fuck if you had dragon pox from stem to stern, I’d still want you,” said Sirius, “so save the pity party, what say you?”

Rane shut up.

“If you want to do this, then do it,” Sirius said to her quietly. “Stop being so afraid.”

Rane leaned back, smirking despite herself. “Chickenshit, you mean?”

“Yes! Chickenshit! That’s an excellent way to put it!”

“That’s what my dad just told me,” Rane said. She snorted and finished her firewhiskey in a go. “That I’m a chickenshit if I don’t stay with you. And you know, he’s right, I _am_ a chickenshit. I’m scared of hurting you. Or losing you.”

She swallowed against the lump that had suddenly manifested in her throat, feeling Sirius’s eyes on her.

“I’m willing to take that bet,” said Sirius simply. “You’ve just got to let me.”

Rane looked over and met his eyes. He looked at her for a moment in silence, his face unreadable, then suddenly got up, dropping his cigarette in a spray of sparks, and bending over her kissed her hard, holding her face in both of his hands.

“If you don’t want to hurt me, then don’t,” he said, drawing back, looking into her eyes, nose to nose. “I love you, Rane, I love you more than bloody anything on this fucking earth. So let me, okay?”

Rane looked up at him, her eyes glimmering. “Okay. Okay, Sirius. But -”

A peculiar expression suddenly came over her face.

Sirius drew back, looking at her in some alarm. “What?”

Rane bowed her head for a moment, holding the back of her hand over her mouth, her firewhiskey glass still grasped lightly in her hand.

“Rane, blimey, you don’t look so well, what’s -?” Sirius began, but before he could finish Rane had leapt up, dropping her glass in a spray of shattered shards, darted for the edge of the patio, where there was a large hedge, and thrown herself halfway over the top of it. Her head cleared the edge of the bush just before she vomited violently.

“What the - bloody - _Jesus_ -” Sirius stammered, completely taken aback. He strode over to her, placed a tentative hand on the small of her back, which was still almost supine in her attempt to vault herself out of the way. “Blimey, you’ve only had one whiskey, haven’t you -?”

Rane leaned slowly backwards, searching her stomach for any signs of further eruption. She stood cautiously before him, her hand clamped over her mouth, sweat glistening on her pale brow.

“Holy fuck,” she said, muffled. “I barfed.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” said Sirius, laughing in spite of himself. “Are you alright?”

Rane nodded, shutting her eyes briefly. She swallowed heavily, placing her hands on her hips.

“I dunno what the hell,” she said, shaking her head. She glanced at the shards of the glass that had moments before held the firewhiskey that she’d just upchucked all over the fresh snow. “I’m sorry about your glass, Sirius, I know it was your family’s -”

Sirius waved this off. “What did you eat?”

“Nothing, nothing since yesterday afternoon,” Rane replied, shaking her head. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, she felt a little uneasy. It wasn’t like her to vomit randomly like that, not even under stress. “Slammed that firewhiskey too fast maybe. Do you have some Pepperup Potion somewhere inside, you think?”

“Dunno, but I’ll look, hang on,” said Sirius briskly, and in a flash he had vanished inside and gone jogging up the stairs. Rane smashed the remains of his cigarette smoldering on the ground with the heel of her shoe, then put her own out and strode inside herself.

“. . . don’t think the Minister noticed any of you were gone,” Kingsley was saying as she walked into the dining room, “but if he finds out any of you were fraternizing with the Elves he’ll want an inquest, and that’s the last thing we need.”

“I’ll make something up,” said Wade grimly, “Fudge is a little afraid of me, I think, I don’t know that he’ll make a big thing of it -”

“Him being afraid of you is exactly why we can’t give him any reason to sack you,” Mad-Eye said scathingly. “You saw what he did to your daughter just for being related to them . . .”

“I am afraid Alastor does have a point,” said Dumbledore gravely. “Cornelius will use any reason at his disposal to rid himself of those in his employ that he deems a threat. We must continue to not draw attention to ourselves. I suggest you both prepare an alibi for yesterday’s events. Tonks, as well.”

“My mum and dad will back me up if they have to,” said Tonks. “They know what a nutter Fudge is these days, they won’t mind.”  
She and Remus were together at the stove, making what Rane presumed was that mushroom omelet, but the smell did nothing to rouse her appetite; indeed, it made her feel like puking all over again.

“You look a bit peaky,” said Remus, looking over at her with some concern. “Are you feeling alright?”

Rane shook her head, taking a seat. “Just barfed randomly,” she said. “All the craziness last night, maybe, I dunno.”

Sirius came back into the dining room, empty-handed. “No use,” he said grimly, taking a seat beside her. “Kreacher must’ve nicked them and hid them someplace, he’s been on a kick ever since we started swamping out headquarters . . .”

“Don’t suppose you’ve taken anything to drink from strangers lately?” said Moody, his magical eye rolling around at her. “Nothing suspicious?”

“Yeah, of course, all the time,” Rane replied soberly. “Didn’t they teach you that in Auror training, too?”

“It’s nothing to joke about!” said Mad-Eye, leveling a gnarled finger at her and looking forbidding. “Better wizards and witches than the likes of us have snuffed it for worse reasons, y’know . . .”

“Maybe you’re pregnant,” said Tonks offhandedly as she flipped the omelet.

Wade, who had been sipping coffee, choked and began to cough abruptly.

“Don’t be stupid, she’s not _pregnant,”_ he gasped.

A very thick silence fell at the table.

 _“Right?”_ Wade added, looking at her.

Rane scoffed. “No, god, of _course_ I’m not, what a thing to say . . .”

But she paused, looking at the wood grain on the table in front of her, thinking.

“Nah,” she murmured. She glanced over at Sirius, who, it seemed, had picked up her abrupt doubt like a fever; he was looking over at her, his eyes very wide, his mouth slightly agape, looking pale and rather alarmed.

“No,” said Rane again, looking back at him. “No, I’m not.”

“No,” Sirius agreed, shaking his head quickly.

“No! _No,”_ Rane repeated, and threw a rather crazy grin at her father, who was looking at her very carefully. “No. I’m sure I just . . . I must have eaten something . . . “

“Well, me mum had morning sickness like a bastard when she had me,” Tonks went on, quite unaware of the tension that had sprung up behind her. “Said every morning before she’d eaten anything, she’d start spewing her - ow, blimey!”

Remus had stood on her foot pointedly. He exchanged a significant glance with her, his eyebrows high, shaking his head minutely.

“Aaaaaany-way,” said Tonks heartily, “who wants some omelet?”

 

 

 

 


	12. A Small Mishap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rane and Remus explore an uncomfortable possibility

Rane sat in the bathroom of her London flat, her back against the peeling wooden door, her legs crossed Indian-style, looking down at something in her hand. Above her, the ancient light bulb, its harsh luminosity throwing the curtainless shower into unpleasantly sharp resolution, flickered irresolutely, as if considering blowing out once and for all. Beneath the cracked mirror, on the yellowing porcelain sink, sat a pink box, opened roughly, its monograph discarded in an indifferent wad next to the dripping faucet. Rane was motionless save for the gentle action of her breath, moving the fine hairs hanging before her face with its regular cadence.

There was a loud, open-handed knock at the door.

“Finished?” came an impatient voice.

Rane got to her feet limberly, pulling open the door behind her. Remus Lupin stood there, one hand still raised to bang on the door again. He looked at her with his eyebrows raised.

 _“Well?”_ said Remus.

At first Rane said nothing at all. She brushed past him, strode to her threadbare couch, and flopped down onto it, her long legs trailing out before her, the pregnancy test held loosely in her hand. Remus stood with his hands on his hips, waiting.

“You _are,”_ he breathed. “You’re -”

“Nope,” said Rane, shaking her head, still looking at her knees. She held up the test so that Remus could see the small hexagon-shaped window at its end, which was now emblazoned with an inky blue X shape.

Remus crossed the room to her and snatched it out of her hand, inspecting it hastily. After a moment he lowered it again, looking down at Rane.

“Negative,” Rane muttered, and crossed her arms over her thin chest. “Says it’s negative.”

Remus sat down beside her gingerly, setting the used test on the arm of the badly upholstered sofa which was the only real piece of furniture adorning Rane’s small, dingy apartment. The floor was stained cement, the wallpaper was ancient and peeling, and the old-fashioned furnace in the corner seemed to either be disengaged or completely inefficient; the living room was so cold Remus could almost see his breath puffing out in front of him. In truth, between her journeys to parlay with the Elves and her stints at Order headquarters, coupled with what had only a few weeks prior been a burgeoning and hectic career as an Auror, Rane found herself here so rarely that its cheerless interior perturbed her very little anymore. Indeed, maybe that was why she had found herself so quickly at home within Grimmauld Place’s gritty parapets.

Remus was looking at Rane, who had not taken her eyes from her knees.

“So you’re not pregnant,” he said, his voice cautiously neutral, seemingly unable to decide whether he should be congratulatory or consoling.

Rane said nothing. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how she felt now that she knew for sure, after two days spent agonizing over it. During this time, Sirius had been almost preposterously attentive and affectionate towards her, bringing her an ancient Stargrass Elixir he’d found in a cupboard in his father’s study in case she became nauseous again and narrowly critiquing the constituents of every meal they shared (“Tonks, are you _certain_ that milk is pasteurized? Maybe we all had best just have pumpkin juice . . . Perhaps pass on the smoked kippers and the pâté as well, don’t you think, Rane . . .?”).

She ought to be quite pleased, hadn’t she? Because after Tonks’s comment at breakfast that morning, she had been filled with a torrid dread that she had never experienced before. After they’d eaten (Rane managing only a token bite or two of Remus’s mushroom omelet, which was probably excellent under other circumstances), she had retired to the balcony where she had perched herself on one of the chairs, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring out at the courtyard with haunted eyes, the argument with Sirius and the previous evening’s attack quite forgotten. Rane had never been pregnant before; indeed, she had never even been in a position to worry that she could be. In fact, she had thought woefully as she sat in the early afternoon chill, watching the snow drift down, had she ever even thought about having children in all her days? She didn’t think she ever had, not with any real earnestness. She had been so consumed with her career, with the quandary her heritage had bestowed upon her, with her own mostly solitary life, and at last with falling in love with Sirius Black, that she had not spared a moment’s deliberation on such a thing as the possibility of a someday family of her own.

And now, here she sat on her shitty sofa, the negative pregnancy test she’d bought at a corner store in south London lying next to Remus with its apathetic message facing her stained tile ceiling. She had asked him to come over because she didn’t think she could bear to go through with this endeavor alone (her first instinct had been Tonks, the only other female she was friendly with that was at least somewhat near to her own age, but Tonks was away on Order duty). Remus had of course obliged, and she had seen the same fretting on his face that she felt fluttering around in her own stomach. She had been relatively comforted by his sheltering presence, had accepted the bracing one-armed hug he gave her as she stood in the doorway of the bathroom, the pink box clutched in her hand, deciding whether she would go take the stupid test or just chuck it in the trash and forget the whole bullshit thing, and never mind if she was being a chickenshit coward. Just get it over with, then you can stop agonizing over it, he had said gently, and here she was in the clear at last, and she didn’t know why she wasn’t ecstatically relieved. She was . . . What was she?

“I guess not,” Rane murmured.

“I thought you would be a bit more pleased than this . . .”

“I am, I think,” said Rane in a low voice. She clasped her hands in her lap momentarily, then glanced sidelong at Remus. “I dunno, I feel almost . . .”

“Disappointed?”

Rane latched onto this word at once. Yes, _disappointed_ was the word for this feeling, it fit flawlessly. She was _disappointed._ But to say this aloud was more bravery than she was prepared to demonstrate.

“I just . . .” Rane sighed, frustrated. “I can’t have a kid, it would be just . . . Awful. Awful for all of us. I mean, there’s the Order, and Sirius is trapped at Grimmauld Place with the whole world out for him, the Ministry is on the warpath, Fudge with his head up his ass and me without a job since he fired me -”

“It wouldn’t have been awful,” said Remus, giving her a surprised look. “It would have been rather badly timed, I believe, but certainly not awful -”

“I know, I know,” Rane said quickly, nodding. “Awful isn’t what I meant, just -Remus, I’ve never been in this situation before . . .”

“Never?” said Remus, surprised. “Not with anyone before Sirius?”

“Oh give me a break,” said Rane, looking at him with one eyebrow raised. “I mean, you see how much of a pain in the ass I can be, you can’t really think they were queuing up to have babies with me before him . . .?”

“Well . . . Yes,” said Remus, shrugging. “You’re beautiful, young, clever - I’d have really thought so, yes.”

“Well, you’re overlooking some of my finer character flaws, then,” Rane replied wryly.

“Were you hoping you _were_ pregnant?”

“Fuck knows,” Rane muttered, rubbing her forehead.

Remus sat for a moment in silence at her side, watching her profile.

“You know, it’s perfectly normal,” he said at length.

“What, getting knocked up?”

Remus snorted. “No, no . . . I’m talking about you and Sirius. It’s been what, a few months now for the two of you?”

Rane took a moment to count silently on her fingers. “Six.”

“Well, you’re both the right age for it,” said Remus. “This is the natural progression of things, after all . . .”

“I don’t even know if Sirius would want . . . You know . . .” She seemed unable to bring herself to say the word kids, for some reason. “I’ve never talked to him about it -”

“I rather think he does,” said Remus simply.

“Oh?” said Rane, nonplussed.

“Well, you’ve seen the way he is with Harry, haven’t you?” said Remus. “He never had much of a family growing up, after all . . . He’s mentioned it to me a few times since he’s been out of Azkaban.”

“What did he say?” Rane asked, curious despite herself.

Remus sighed, leaning back and lacing his hands behind his head. He looked rather shabbier and more roughly hewn than usual, Rane noticed; there were circles around his eyes and the disheveled beginnings of a beard he hadn’t bothered to rid himself of was shot through with silver. She tried to recall if she had seen the full moon recently, but couldn’t remember; she suspected it was close at hand, one way or another.

“Before the Order was reinstated, Sirius was still on the run, of course,” Remus told her. “We didn’t see much of one another, neither of us wished to risk it, but we wrote fairly frequently, and every few months he would stay at my flat, to get out of the elements. Cold winters, you understand.”

Rane nodded, curling her legs beneath her Indian-style.

“While we were in contact, and often apropos of nothing when he was staying round at mine,” Remus went on, “he would bring up how lonely he was. Saying he wished he had someone who cared about him, the way James and Lily had one another while they were alive. He was in a bad place back then, Sirius. Living in the wild and going for weeks sometimes without seeing another soul . . . I imagine it was very difficult for someone like him. He’s a social creature.”

Remus shook his head, stroking his stubbly chin pensively.

“Talking about James and Lily would inevitably lead to Harry, of course . . . He had spent so much of all that down time devising these plans to clear his name and rescue Harry from his aunt and uncle and then find a place for the two of them.”

Rane snorted despite herself. “Harry would like that.”

“I have no doubt,” Remus agreed, smiling. “And then sometimes he’d talk about his own son or daughter. How if he found someone, he wanted to be a proper father, after all the mess with Peter Pettigrew and the Ministry was cleared away.”

Rane felt a sudden and massive surge of powerful sadness for Sirius at these words. She looked down at her hands, feeling the threat of tears at the backs of her eyes, wishing fiercely that she could hold Sirius at that moment, kiss him, show him how much he deserved anything but the shit hand he’d been dealt, how forcefully she wished to give him everything she could muster . . .

“He wants children,” Remus said once again, nodding in an assured way. “And I haven’t the faintest doubt that he wants to have them with you.”

Rane leaned back on her sofa, the springs squeaking rustily beneath her, and ran her fingers through her long hair, sighing.

“Do you?” Remus asked her.

“Do I want kids?”

Remus nodded.

Rane shook her head. “You know, it’s weird . . . Before Tonks said something about it the other day, I never even thought about it. But then, I’ve never met anyone like Sirius before . . . I’ve never, you know, wanted to make anyone happy the way I do with him. I’ve never . . . Never considered . . .”

She lapsed into silence.

“What about you and Tonks?”

Remus gave her a suddenly flustered look, his cheeks reddening slightly.

“Well, that . . . That’s different,” he said. “Tonks . . . She’s much younger than I am, and there is the problem of my . . . My condition . . .”

“Tonks is only a few years younger than me,” Rane pointed out. “And I put it to you that my condition is just as dangerous as yours.”

Remus glanced askance at her. Rane returned his gaze.

“I mean, being a werewolf . . . Well, it’s different, of course,” she added quickly, hoping she hadn’t just committed some faux pas. “But there are a lot of similarities, don’t you think? I can tell we both spend a lot of time alone because of it, for one thing . . . The Elves don’t really want much to do with me, they tolerate me because they’re a little afraid of me, I think . . . And it isn’t painful for me the way I’m sure it is for you, but I worry that I’ll kill someone one day all the time. I worry that I can’t control it.”

Remus sat in silence, pondering this.

“Anyway, my _point,”_ Rane went on, “was that Sirius still seems to like me okay. And he knows. He saw how dangerous I can be. I tried to ditch the whole thing because I was so worried I might hurt him one day, but he just . . .”

She shrugged.

“He just said he wouldn’t take no for an answer.” She glanced at Remus. “Do you ever worry . . . I dunno . . . About Tonks? That you might hurt her?”

Remus’s face fell. He looked at his shoes.

“Every day,” he said softly. “Every time I see her.”

“But she doesn’t care either, does she?” said Rane. “She loves you anyway.”

Remus said nothing.

“Well,” said Rane. “Maybe we both need to get over ourselves, then.”

Remus laughed in spite of himself, shaking his head. “Perhaps so.”

They sat in silence for a moment, meditating on this.

“Do you worry that your power will be passed on to your child?” Remus asked her suddenly.

And in a sudden rush, Rane realized that she was worried about this. Until that moment, she had not been able to convey the inarticulate horror she had felt upon that first morning, a giant looming fear so deep within her psyche that it refused to manifest itself, circling beneath her conscious mind like a colossal shark in black waters.

“It’s not power, it’s a curse,” she heard herself saying, still reeling from this realization. “And fuck yes, I’m worried. Do you -?”

“Yes,” said Remus at once. “Yes, I worry that any child of mine will be a werewolf.”

“I didn’t know lycanthropy was hereditary . . .”

“No one knows if it is or not, specifically,” Remus told her; Rane had the immediate impression that he had done his research on the matter. “There have been no cases of werewolves having children to my knowledge. It comes down to whether or not we would want to risk it.”

Rane had never discussed Remus’s lycanthropy with him at such great length. She realized with a guilty jolt that despite her frequent fretting, her own condition seemed quite tame in many ways by comparison.

“Even if it was hereditary, there are worse things, Remus,” she said quietly.

Remus turned to her, his eyes suddenly blazing.

“Are there?” he asked her. “You haven’t seen how the wizarding world at large reacts when they know of my affliction, Rane. They can hardly bear to speak to me. Why would I wish that on anyone? Why would I wish that on my own child?”

Rane said nothing. She knew just what he meant.

“We should get back to headquarters,” said Remus. “Sirius will be waiting on tenterhooks, I haven’t a single doubt . . .”

“Yeah, and my pad isn’t the most inviting place at the best of times,” Rane agreed grimly, looking around them.

Remus followed her gaze. “I must admit,” he said, “it isn’t what I had expected.”

“Yeah, it’s not much better than Grimmauld Place, really,” Rane agreed. “I lived here through Auror training and pretty much just came here to sleep for a few hours and take a shower and then leave again. And then once I passed the trials, I was just at the Ministry all the time anyway. Never really saw the point of fixing it up if I was only going to be hanging out here for ten hours a month, you know?” She sighed.

“I am in a similar situation myself,” Remus agreed, getting to his feet and stretching. “I, however, am not quite brave enough for visitors. Sirius was only an exception due to his being used to sleeping outside . . . Probably the only way anyone would find it hospitable . . .”

Rane, who had gotten to her feet as well, picked up the pregnancy test Remus had left on the arm of her sofa, scrutinizing it.

“Think I’ll bring this with,” she said.

“Sentimental value?” said Remus, smiling.

“Something to show Sirius,” she replied, and sighed deeply. “Saves some explaining, I guess.”

Remus reached out and squeezed her shoulder bracingly. She turned to him gratefully, returning his smile.

“It’s never too late, you know,” he said. “You’re both young.”

Rane sighed. “Want to do the honors?”

Remus lifted his wand. Rane had just reached out to take his wrist when she hesitated.

“Oh, hang on!” she said suddenly, spinning around. “Hang on, the _stupid_ box -”

She dashed into the bathroom, fumbled around in the sink (knocking her empty toothbrush holder askance in the process - her toothbrush’s current home was in a cabinet in the bathroom adjacent to Sirius’s room, where it was certain to get more use), and stuffed the crumpled monograph into the bright pink box the pregnancy test had come in.

“Okay, I’m good,” she said, cramming the test itself back into the box and stuffing the whole works into her robes pocket. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

She took Remus’s wrist, and in a whirl of robes, they had vanished.

  
WHEN Remus and Rane arrived at Grimmauld Place, they were both quite surprised to find not only Sirius but Molly sitting in the living room, very obviously awaiting their arrival. There was an open bottle of Pinot Noir on the glass table before them (Rane noticed that a hefty portion of it was gone), and both of them were holding goblets.

Sirius leapt to his feet at once so hastily that he slopped some of his wine onto Kingsley’s robes, which were fortunately the same deep red hue as the Pinot was.

“Blimey, could you have been gone any _longer?”_ he said, striding to Rane. He took her into his arms and kissed her, tasting quite markedly of wine, then hugged her to him so tightly all the air whooshed out of her lungs in a rush.

 _“Sir-choking-me-”_ she wheezed at his shoulder.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said distractedly, looking from her to Remus.

“Oh Rane, dear, I’ve heard everything, Sirius says you were dreadfully ill!” Molly was saying. She looked, indeed, just as harried as Sirius did; she was clutching her goblet of wine white-knuckled, looking at Rane as if she were a frail terminal patient rather than a strapping twenty-something who’d thrown up a time or two. “You know, I’ve _just_ the potion for you if it happens again, my aunt used to brew it for me while I was pregnant for Ginny and it only takes a few days to infuse -”

“Thanks, Molly, but there’s no need,” Rane said, handing Sirius the pink box.

She was watching his face carefully as he took it. He was quite pale; he looked from her to Remus to the box in quick succession, but he made no move to pull out the test. He searched her face, his mouth drawn down into a moue of dismay, his brows knitted.

“No?” he said, sounding almost childishly forlorn.

She shook her head.

His face fell so suddenly and completely that it was as if someone had reached out and slapped him. He looked down at the test in his hands, its pink box frenetically cheerful in the gloomy living room, and sighed heavily.

“No?” said Molly, who had gotten quickly to her feet as well and was looking from the box to Rane. “Really?”

“No,” Remus agreed, pulling off his cloak.

“Oh, I was so _sure_ . . . All of her symptoms fit, didn’t they?” Molly said, sounding as disappointed as Sirius looked. “Let me see that -”

She snatched the box out of Sirius’s hand without waiting for a reply and dropped onto the couch again, dumping its contents unceremoniously on the cushion. Sirius looked at Rane once again, still looking fantastically unhappy.

“I dunno why I feel so . . .” he trailed off, looking at her desperately.

“Me neither,” said Rane, shaking her head. She reached out and took one of his hands, rubbing her thumb over his gently. “I mean, we should be happy, right? It’s . . . it’s bad timing, right, Remus?”

Remus said nothing. He, too, was looking at Sirius sympathetically. It could not have been clearer that he was hoping, in spite of everything, for a different response.

“The Order,” Sirius said abruptly, straightening. “The Order needs us. We’ve got to . . . We’ve got to put that first, haven’t we?”

“There’s a time for these things,” Remus said bracingly, clutching Sirius’s shoulder and fixing him with a concerned look. “There’ll be a time, Padfoot. There’s always -”

Molly said something so low it was unintelligible from behind them.

“What was that?” said Rane, peering around Sirius at her.

She was buried behind the crumpled monograph, which she had at last unfurled completely. With a rattle, she set it down on the table next to the Pinot Noir, brandishing the test she now held in her hand. Her eyes were round and her cheeks were very pink.

“I said,” she said in a high-pitched, breathy voice, “that this test is positive!”

A very profuse silence fell at this.

“No, no, it’s _negative,”_ said Rane, shaking her head. “The blue X, see it -?”

“YES I VERY BLOODY WELL DO SEE IT!” Molly shrieked, seemingly unable to contain her excitement. “THAT - MEANS - POSITIVE!”

Sirius stared at her, his mouth agape, looking entirely baffled.

“What?!” he said, snatching the monograph up from the table. For a moment he remained buried behind it as well, and then he reached out, grabbed Rane’s arm and dragged her brusquely over to him, pointing to something at the very end of the page. Rane squinted down at where he was indicating - a section titled **HOW TO READ TEST RESULTS**.

“Bloody hell she’s right, blue means _pregnant,”_ said Sirius in a rush, and looked at Rane with what she thought was the biggest, most utterly overjoyed smile she had ever seen on his face before. He gripped her hand so tightly she thought he would break all of her fingers like twigs. “Blue means BLOODY PREGNANT!”

“POSITIVE! IT’S POSITIVE!” Molly shrieked again.

Sirius threw the monograph over his shoulder with a flourish, grasped Rane’s face, and kissed her passionately. Then, suddenly, Molly was leaping up and embracing both of them at once in a bone-cracking hug, filling Rane’s range of view with a large amount of fluffy red hair. Remus was standing in silence, looking at Sirius and Molly with an uncomprehending, bemused smile on his face, as if politely confused. Sirius, meanwhile, abandoned all pretense altogether, turned and leapt onto the sofa, where he began to jump up and down, flailing wildly and sending pillows hither and yon.

“BLOODY SWEET HELL WE’RE PREGNANT!” he bellowed at the top of his voice, and performed a clumsy flip off the back of the couch, knocking over his goblet and almost sending the bottle of wine flying as well. He went dashing into the kitchen, his arms above his head. Presently he could be heard shouting out on the patio as well.

“PREGNANT! WE’RE - FUCKING - PREGNANT!”

Molly finally released Rane, holding her at arm’s length, already weeping freely and beaming at her.

“Oh I couldn’t be more _thrilled!”_ she shrieked, and clutching Rane’s face planted a massive kiss on her cheek. “Oh Rane, think of it, it’s wonderful! So _wonderful_ in all these dark times!”

Rane broke away from her, feeling a cold sweat breaking out on her brow. Remus had continued to stare around him as if completely baffled by this sudden turn of events. Rane snatched up the monograph that lay discarded on the floor, looking again at the directions. She cast about for the test itself, spotted it on the couch, snatched it up and held it an inch from her eyes as Molly threw her arms around Remus, sobbing her heart out.

Blue. A blue fucking X.

“See? See that?” Molly pointed needlessly to the instructions again, her eyes gleaming. She clutched Rane’s arm, looking fit to burst with the happiness and emotion of it all. Remus was peering over her shoulder, whey-faced, scanning the instructions as if to see for himself, his mouth forming the words silently.

“That’s a blue X,” said Rane faintly.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Remus said, and began to laugh. “Congratulations!”

“Holy shit,” Rane breathed. Outside, Sirius could be heard loudly roaring a string of strange curses followed by more heralding of this news. “Holy shit I’m fucking pregnant.”

And with this, she dropped to the ground in a dead faint.  



	13. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rane, Sirius, Remus and Molly celebrate and reminisce on the past

A great deal of alcohol was consumed that night at headquarters. Molly, who seemed positively transported by the news of Rane’s pregnancy test, wasted no time sending owls to everyone else in the Order straightaway, insisting they all join in celebrating that following weekend. As she, Sirius, Remus and Rane sat around the living room (everyone except Rane was brandishing heavy goblets of wine; Rane, feeling the first authentic cramp of wistfulness for a big, skunky glass of beer since her early twenties, held a glass of pumpkin juice instead), Molly suggested gaily over her fifth or sixth sheet of parchment that they ought to invite everyone home from school for the weekend to partake in the merriment.

“After all, Dumbledore will be coming, I’m certain he would approve,” she beamed, hiccupping. “Oh, Sirius, whatever do you suppose Harry will say?”

Remus had put away his share of wine in the spirit of good news, and Molly was nearing her perimeter as well, but no one had gotten drunker than Sirius Black that evening. He was boisterous, hearty, full of laughter. Rane had never seen him look better; indeed, despite what must have been his seventh glass of wine rocking portentously in his grasp, his eyes were alight with a sort of liveliness she had only glimpsed before this. He had knotted his long black hair at the nape of his neck, exposing the spare good looks that echoed the young, effortlessly handsome creature he had been before Azkaban; the sharp angles of his jaw line, the thickness of his neck, the lines at the corners of his mouth that deepened delightfully when he laughed, which was frequently. He looked . . . Well, sexy, truthfully. Rane found herself wishing several times, quite in spite of the madness of the evening’s events, that she could whisk him away upstairs alone for her own sordid purposes.

“Harry shall be _delighted,”_ Sirius slurred merrily, banging the flat of his hand on the table before them. “I haven’t any doubt. But you must let me be the - hic - the one to tell him, Molly, you really must, I won’t have him hearing it from anyone else -”

“Oh, naturally,” Molly replied quickly, but Rane saw her slip one of the sheets of parchment from the bottom of her stack and cram it into a wad hastily. “Remus, you’ll be telling Tonks, won’t you?”

Remus nodded promptly. “And Alastor. They’ll be thrilled.”

“You really think Harry and Ron and the rest of them should come home for this?” said Rane dubiously. She was sitting in her trademark manner, Indian-style on the sofa, Sirius close at her side with one arm slung around her shoulders. “You don’t think Dolores will throw a shit fit if she finds out?”

“Oh, she’ll throw a fit, alright,” said Remus grimly. “I suspect that if they do come to headquarters for the weekend, it will have to be with the help of Dumbledore himself, and I daresay he may not be wild about the idea -”

“Oh nonsense!” Molly said, waving her hand. “That old bat hasn’t got any real power -”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Rane darkly. She knew Dolores Umbridge from her days at the Ministry, and could think of only a handful of other people she disliked more; Umbridge had gone well out of her way to discourage Fudge from allowing Rane to undergo Auror training, and Wade had frequently voiced his theory that it had been more Umbridge masterminding her expulsion from the Auror office than Fudge himself. Though Rane and Wade had stayed well out of her way for the most part, Umbridge had made it quite clear to everyone that she found the idea of the Ministry employing Elves, whether full-blooded or not, highly irregular and faintly revolting. Rane felt genuinely sympathetic for everyone laboring beneath her sovereignty at Hogwarts.

“Blimey,” said Sirius wonderingly, for what was probably the tenth or eleventh time that evening. “I just can’t believe it.”

Swaying slightly, he glanced over at Rane, who he had kept on his immediate person all evening, as if afraid she would evaporate if he wasn’t touching her. She looked back at him, her expression mirroring his incredulity.

“Me neither,” said Rane quietly.

This was the truth; she couldn’t believe it, quite literally _couldn’t._ She felt certain that this must be how bombing survivors felt; the world around her felt contrived and fictitious, and even her own emotions - largely a mixture of dizzy exhilaration and sheer terror - seemed oddly counterfeit. She wondered uneasily if the reality of the situation would just suddenly strike her like a bolt from the blue without warning at some point, perhaps after this peculiar battle fatigue had worn off. Maybe the shock would do her in, who knew.

Sirius was still looking over at her. He reached out and stroked her thigh gently.

“I fucking love you,” he said.

“I fucking love you too,” said Rane, grinning at him despite herself. He wore such a comically affectionate expression that it wouldn’t have looked out of place on a cartoon character. “You sure are drunk, ain’tcha, babydoll?”

“I’m not!” Sirius replied, giving her an exaggeratedly affronted look.

“Oh, yeah? How much wine have you had?” Rane asked him wryly.

“You’re wellied, alright, mate,” said Remus, looking highly amused.

“Oh honestly you two, let him celebrate, who’s counting tonight?” Molly piped up from where she was bent over her parchment, still scribbling away; this one appeared to be addressed to Bill Weasley. “It isn’t every day you get to celebrate this sort of thing, you know . . .”

Rane had to hide her smile in her goblet of pumpkin juice; it was a rare thing indeed for Molly to defend Sirius in the best of cases. Indeed, it was seldom that they entirely got along with one another at all . . . Molly had made it clear in the past that she disapproved of many of Sirius’s more reckless traits, in particular with regards to his tendency to treat Harry like the man he would become rather than the boy he was.

“But really, can you _believe_ it?” said Sirius again, spreading the arm that wasn’t wrapped around Rane expansively outwards (a splash of wine slopped over the edge, landing on Molly’s parchment and causing her to squeak in surprise). “I mean, honestly, Moony, can you believe it? Me . . . a dad? It’s barmy just to - _hic_ \- think about!”

Remus burst out laughing, shaking his head. “It is,” he said, leaning back. “It’s the maddest thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Molly agreed, looking up and shaking her head.

“Can you imagine what James would be saying right now?” said Remus, grinning.

Sirius threw his head back and bellowed laughter, leaning against Rane heavily. Rane, quite unable to help herself, was laughing as well, though James had died before she was ten years old and she’d never known him. Sirius’s obvious mirth was absolutely contagious. It was wonderful seeing him like this.

“Ahh, but I wish he and Lily were here for this,” Sirius said wistfully, leaning back. The hand not slung over the sofa was tickling the back of Rane’s neck gently beneath her hair. He cast a rather sorrowful look at the ceiling, where the ornate Black chandelier hung. “I haven’t even got any family to tell. What use is good news if you haven’t got anyone to share it with?”

“Fuck that,” said Rane fairly, and leaned her head on his shoulder, holding him tighter against her. “We have a whole mess of people to tell. I mean, just look at Molly, she’s practically writing a novel over there . . .”

“It’s true!” Molly agreed, gesticulating at her parchment. “Just look at this stack already! And I haven’t even gotten to Charlie yet . . .”

Sirius was stroking Rane’s hair gently. She kissed his shoulder, rubbing his chest.

“Have you got anyone to tell?” Sirius asked her. “Blimey, I don’t even know if you’ve got siblings or not -”

“I don’t,” said Rane, glancing sidelong at him.

“None?” Sirius looked surprised.

Rane shook her head. “Just me. I must have been so much of a pain in the ass that my parents decided to stop reproducing.”

Remus snorted into his wine.

“You only had one brother, right?” Rane said to Sirius.

Sirius glanced at her, surprised. “Regulus, yeah. Did I tell you -?”

But Rane was shaking her head. “The Ministry was really interested in him for a time there.”

“Were they?” Remus asked her, looking as curious as Sirius.

Rane sipped her pumpkin juice. “Well, he was a Death Eater,” she said at length. She glanced at Sirius, fearful that she had offended him, but he was sitting at her side quite peaceably, his wine in one hand, looking at her with a polite, crisp interest that, Rane was beginning to learn, was a mainstay of the English people and which did not seem to diminish as a result of alcohol consumption.

“But that was years ago,” said Molly. “Regulus died during the First War . . . You _can’t_ be old enough to have -”

“Oh, we knew he was dead,” Rane went on, “this was back when Sirius got out of Azkaban . . . They had no clue where he might be so they were looking into where Regulus had been seen last. I hadn’t taken my trials yet so I didn’t get in on a lot of the finer stuff, but . . . Desperation,” she added with grim satisfaction.

Sirius snorted contemptuously. “He was an idiot. Got just what he deserved, I reckon.”

Rane sighed. “I don’t know any of my family besides my mom and my dad,” she said after a moment. “The Elves keep their distance and my mom’s side are mostly dead.”

“When we visited Ylle Thalas,” said Remus, looking hesitant, “your father mentioned that you were, er - generally unwelcome there -”

“They don’t like that there’s a half-Elf,” said Rane, looking at him with an expression of something akin to derision. “They didn’t want their bloodline tainted. So they like to pretend that I don’t exist.”

She fell silent, thinking of the child growing in her womb. She wondered darkly how the Elves of Ylle Thalas and Elyfalume would react if they knew. _When_ they knew, she corrected herself; it was nigh on impossible to keep anything from the Elves.

“Bet they won’t be happy about this,” said Sirius, clearly thinking along the same lines.

“Well, they can kiss my entire ass,” said Rane shortly. Sirius snorted.

“Where is your mum?” asked Molly, looking up at her curiously. “You know, in all the years I’ve known Wade, I’ve never -”

“Molly,” said Remus warningly.

“What?” said Molly, looking honestly bewildered.

“Nah, it’s okay,” said Rane, waving this off. “She’s in the States. I see her every here and there.”

“What’s she like?” asked Sirius, looking at her over his wine.

“She’s . . .” Rane inclined her head, thinking. “She’s not always the nicest lady. She did a number on my dad.”

“A number on him?” Sirius was leaning forward, clearly very interested in this turn in conversation.

Rane hesitated, looking into his eyes. She had never discussed her mother with Sirius; indeed, she had hardly discussed her mother with anyone in a lot of years. She sighed, clasping her hands together before her.

“My mom cheated on him, years ago, when I was little. Some guy on a motorcycle, that’s all I remember, but I don’t think it even mattered who it was. So my dad took me and we came to England, to be closer to his family in Elyfalume -”

“What’s Elyfalume?” said Molly.

“It’s the Elven province here,” said Rane, “I think it goes all the way up to Wales, but I can never remember for sure.”

Molly nodded, looking fascinated. Her quill hung poised over the sheet of parchment she was writing to Bill as she listened, her eyes slightly red.

“Anyways, my mom stayed over there,” Rane went on. “It was a big deal because my dad had basically exiled himself from the Elves to be with her, and then she went and did that . . . He got a lot of shit for a while. It was pretty bad . . . I mean, imagine becoming an expatriate for some woman who runs around on you in front of everyone you know. It must have been humiliating.”

She fell silent, suddenly cognizant of the way Sirius, Remus and Molly were all listening to her alertly.

“My dad doesn’t talk about that a whole lot anymore,” she finished.

“What does she look like?” asked Sirius.

Rane looked at him, bewildered. “Who, my mom?”

“Yeah,” said Sirius, smirking. “I’d like to see what sorts of genes I’ve gotten myself into, you know . . .”

Rane snorted. “Actually, I think I have a picture of her, hang on -”

She reached laboriously into her back pocket and produced an ancient, peeling leather wallet, which she flipped open and began to rifle through..

“I know I’ve got one somewhere . . . Ah!”

She flicked an aged, careworn photograph smartly into Sirius’s lap. He picked it up and inspected it. A woman beamed up at him; a small child was sitting cross-legged on the top of a table beside her, quite obviously a young Rane Roth. Rane, her young face solemn, had already begun to develop the startling beauty she would one day possess as an adult, with her round hazel eyes and long dark hair. Her mother, however, was nothing short of gorgeous; Sirius could see why Wade had endured exile for her at once. She was tall and lean, her full lips curved into a smile, and a spill of curly black hair was slung over her shoulder with a careless sort of grace. Rane did, indeed, look exactly like her . . . There was something oddly salacious about her mother that had not been passed on, Sirius thought, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but everything else was eerily spot on, right down to the high cheekbones and long, sooty eyelashes.

“You’re very like her,” said Sirius, feeling that this was a vast understatement.

Rane took the photo back, examining it with an expression of wistfulness. “Yeah, so I’m told.”

Molly snatched the picture and examined it, holding it close to her face. Remus was peering over her shoulder as well. He whistled, low.

“She’s lovely,” he remarked.

“Well, we all know where you must get your looks from,” Molly commented.

“Wade’s a good-looking bloke,” said Remus fairly.

“Oh, he is, isn’t he?” Molly agreed eagerly.

Remus, Sirius and Rane all turned to her. Molly’s face went scarlet at once.

“Well . . . Well, he _is_ good-looking,” she said quietly, furiously folding her parchment. “You know, as they go . . .”

“Oh, that _reminds_ me!” said Rane, her eyes sparkling, looking over at Sirius as she folded the picture back into her wallet and jammed it into the pocket of her jeans. “The other day my dad said something about how girls used to fall all over themselves over you . . . I never realized you were such a stud back in the day, Sirius Black, you filthy lecher, you . . .”

Sirius took a large gulp of wine, his face red, examining the chandelier with great interest, and said nothing. Remus, however, had burst out laughing.

“Is it true?” said Rane, looking from Sirius to Remus, grinning. “Remus, come on, you wouldn’t lie to me . . .”

“He was always the one getting all the girls, wasn’t he?” he said, wiping at his eyes. “From Hogwarts on . . . Bit of a girlfriend hopper, weren’t you, mate?”

Sirius mumbled something about a load of rubbish.

“Well, you must admit, he’s always been so handsome, hasn’t he?” said Molly, folding her final sheet of parchment at last.

“He _is_ a sexy devil,” Rane agreed fondly, patting her cheek. Sirius’s face was nearing an alarming shade of maroon now.

“Do you remember when Dumbledore initiated you?” Remus said to Rane abruptly. “After we’d met?”

Now it was Rane’s turn to flush. Sirius looked between them curiously.

“What’s he on about?”

“I kind of . . . Well, I guess had a little bit of a crush on you,” Rane confessed, feeling absurdly shy about the fact, though given the current state of affairs it seemed ridiculous.

Sirius slapped his knee. “I KNEW IT!”

“What?” Rane looked over at him in surprise. “No - you _did_ -?”

“Well, I should bloody well hope I can still spot it when a girl fancies me after all this time!” Sirius replied, laughing merrily. “Anyway, it didn’t take a detective, did it?”

“It _was_ a bit obvious, dear,” Molly agreed, looking at her apologetically.

 _“Obvious?”_ Rane could feel her face burning. “It was _obvious?_ I mean, I thought I handled myself pretty well, really, considering -!”

“I should hardly think so,” Remus said, smirking. “You were all the time knocking over furniture and dropping things whenever Sirius was around, we all could tell just what was going on . . .”

“You know, Arthur and I rather thought at first that it was Bill,” Molly said thoughtfully. “Before Fleur came along, he said a few times that he wondered if Rane was spoken for or not, mentioned he thought she was quite pretty, that sort of thing -”

“He did, did he?” said Sirius sharply, looking dismayed.

“It was ages ago, don’t worry,” Molly said, waving at him over her wine goblet. “Anyway, even when Bill didn’t come round Rane was still making a bit of a fool of herself, it was quite obvious who she was on about, and Sirius was just as bad . . .”

“Subtlety isn’t Sirius’s strong point,” Remus added, looking amused.

“I tried to make a pass at you ages ago,” Sirius said to Rane, grinning. “You were just too thick to notice, I think . . .”

“You did _not_ -!”

“I did!” Sirius retorted. “I was _always_ trying to chat you up! Mooney was forever shouting at me about it, as a matter of fact . . .”

“Bullshit, I would have realized . . . When?”

“Oh, blimey . . .” Sirius leaned back, pondering. “Let’s see . . . What about the night you broke your finger?”

Rane had nearly forgotten that eventful evening. She had arrived at headquarters late one evening for a meeting and somehow managed to slam her hand in the heavy front door as she’d shut it behind her, eliciting a loud yelp from her. She had still been leaping around holding her injured hand to her chest and swearing raucously when Sirius had come trotting into the foyer, looking alarmed.

 _What’s wrong, Rane_? he had asked her, striding towards her, looking concerned.

 _Door - fucking - finger - god - dammit - fucking - hell_ -! Rane had continued to dance about, hissing in pain, loosing a string of curses. _Oh_ mother-fucker _that hurts_ -!

 _Here, let’s have a look, come into the light,_ Sirius had said, his voice gentle, and he’d led her into the livingroom, one hand on her waist. Rane hadn’t thought anything of this small gesture at the time, being a bit distracted by her crushed thumb. Sirius had sat her down on the sofa, taken a seat beside her (and hadn’t he sat so very close to her, much closer than necessary?).

 _Let’s see it,_ he had said, and had taken Rane’s injured hand in his, his touch gentle, and inspected it critically. Her thumb was a crooked mess, already blossoming into a bloom of blue and purple. Rane had cringed sickly away from the sight of it; she was a fearless person in most ways, but something about fractured bones set her teeth on edge, always had.

 _Well, it’s definitely broken_ , Sirius had announced unnecessarily. He produced his wand from the pocket of his robes. _Shall I straighten you out, then?_

Rane had never broken anything before, nor had such an injury rectified with magic. She eyed his wand guardedly.

 _You’ve done this before, right_? she had asked Sirius.

‘ _Course I have_ , Sirius replied, smirking. _Loads of times_.

Rane hesitated. _I dunno, maybe I should just_ -

 _Episkey!_ Sirius had muttered, aiming his wand at her thumb before she could finish. Rane knew a momentary crescendo of brief, shrill agony, bringing a low gasp out of her quite involuntarily; a second later, however, it had vanished. She wiggled her thumb cautiously; it obeyed her without hesitation or pain.

 _Can’t do anything about the bruising, sorry,_ Sirius had told her grimly, looking up at her and grinning.

 _Jesus, thanks, Sirius,_ Rane had said to him, meeting his eyes.

He held her gaze, his grey meeting her hazel; he still held her hand loosely in his own. And now that she wasn’t distracted by pain, she was sharply cognizant of how very near to her he was. He was stroking her palm with his thumb very lightly, but this simple, almost offhanded touch was enough to alight all kinds of things within Rane. She was abruptly aware of her heartbeat, suddenly quick and heavy.

 _You’ve got lovely eye_ s, Sirius had told her quietly, still gazing at her.

Rane had opened her mouth and shut it. She was very aware of the sensation of his skin, the tiny shoots of gold within his irises, the lines at the corner of his mouth that she found so oddly charming.

 _Sirius_ \- she had begun, but then Mad-Eye had shouted at them from the door of the kitchen.

 _Oy! Will you lot hurry it up, we’re all waiting for you_!

Rane broke away from Sirius, standing up, the moment passing as suddenly as it had come. He followed suit, looking rather disappointed, and together they had walked into the kitchen to join the meeting. And hadn’t he spent a lot of time that evening looking at her when he thought she wasn’t paying attention?

“Okay, so maybe I was a little thick,” she admitted, looking at Sirius.

“A _little?”_ said Sirius. “Blimey, I don’t think you’d have taken the hint if I’d come right out and said I was in love with you! ‘A little’ . . . Honestly . . .”

“Anyway, what did you ask Remus?” Molly asked Rane, looking curious. “I never heard this one . . .”

“Well, it was the first week she was in the Order, as I recall,” said Remus, leaning back, his goblet held in one hand resting on the arm of his chair. He was stroking his chin pensively, smiling. “One evening we were standing in the hallway about to leave, and all of a sudden she just came right out and said, _Sirius is so handsome_. Apropos of nothing, you understand.”

Rane flushed a deeper crimson as Molly and Sirius both burst out laughing. She remembered the occasion he was referring to. She had been peering back towards the kitchen as she pulled on her riding cloak. Sirius had been standing there, just visible through the doorway, talking animatedly to Arthur and gesturing heatedly about something. Something about him standing there . . . the firelight on his face, the ropey muscles in his forearms flexing, his knitted brows, the flash of his teeth . . . Had suddenly stricken her, forcefully. Not for the first time but certainly for the most extreme, she had recognized that she was deeply attracted to him, a realization she had been stifling with all her might for some time now. She hadn’t realized what she was going to say until it was out; as soon as she’d spoken this aloud, she turned hastily to Remus, who had paused pulling on his coat and was looking at her in surprise.

 _Yes,_ he had said, one eyebrow cocked. _I suppose so_.

 _I just meant . . . I mean, he’s . . . he’s awesome, he’s a great guy_ , Rane had blurted, feeling ungainly. _I didn’t - well, never mind, he’s just . . . He’s great_.

 _Yes,_ Remus had said again, still looking at her, one arm of his jacket on. _Yes, Sirius is an excellent fellow_.

Rane had fallen clumsily silent, buttoning her cloak quickly, her face burning, feeling Remus’s gaze on her.

 _Rane,_ said Remus, his voice curious, _do you fancy him_?

 _Who?_ Rane had replied.

_Sirius._

Rane scoffed, waving a hand. _Do I - what? Sirius? Nah, no way_.

Remus had worn a very curious and rather maddening smile as he looked at her.

 _You know, he quite likes you_ , he had said. _You ought to_ -

 _I should probably get going_ , Rane had said quickly. _It’s getting late - good seeing you, Remus_ -

And with this she had brushed past him hastily and slipped quickly out the door, feeling his eyes following her out into the evening chill.

“I had forgotten about that night,” said Remus fondly, looking over at Sirius.

“Mooney came and told me straightaway, of course,” Sirius said, lifting his goblet towards Remus.

Remus tilted his own back at Sirius in return. “What kind of mate would I be if I hadn’t?”

 _“Remus!_ You told him?” Rane remarked, giving him an injured look.

“Oh, you lot are the worst,” Molly said, shaking her head and getting to her feet, gathering her stack of parchment to her bosom. “I’m off to send these out . . .”

“Sometimes I rather think I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” said Lupin lightly, examining his goblet. “He was quite insufferable afterwards . . .”

“Oh get stuffed, you great prat,” said Sirius, laughing.

“It’s true!” Remus insisted. “Your bloody head would have floated away if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders -”

 _“Fuck,”_ said Rane abruptly, and in a flash she had gotten to her feet and fled the room, one hand clamped over her mouth. Sirius and Remus stared after her, bewildered. The sound of the bathroom door banging open came to them, followed by the unmistakable sound of Rane losing her lunch.

Sirius set his goblet down, peering after her. “Blimey, should I -?”

“Relax,” said Remus. “She’s alright.”

“How long does this keep on?” Sirius asked him frankly. “I don’t remember if Lily was sick like this with Harry, it’s been so long . . .”

“That’s a Molly question, but I suspect it shan’t get any better anytime soon,” Remus told him, shrugging.

Sirius sat back, sighing, rubbing his forehead. After a moment, with an air of having made up his mind, he set his goblet down on the table and got up, swaying slightly, and strode toward the bathroom.

Rane was knelt over the toilet, her shoulders hunched, hugging the ancient toilet. Her hair was hanging in her face, which had picked up a thin sheen of sweat.

“What are you doing?” Sirius asked her, leaning in the doorway hesitantly.

“I’m walking my dog,” Rane replied sardonically, casting a wry smile up at him.

“What can I do?” Sirius asked her tentatively.

Rane reached up, flushed, and stood carefully, the back of her hand over her mouth. She looked up at him, her forehead sparkling with perspiration.

“You can come to bed with me,” she said.

“On one condition,” said Sirius solemnly, leaning against the door jamb.

“Anything.”

“Brush your teeth first,” said Sirius, and leapt nimbly out of the way as Rane aimed a kick at him, laughing.

 


	14. An Unexpected Reaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Wade expresses his feelings (loudly) on the news

  
Wade stood staring from Rane to Sirius and back to Rane again with the slow deliberation of a man observing some spectacle of nature that had never before been witnessed. His angular face was pale, his light blue eyes as round as quarters in his head. They were standing in the corridor of the headquarters of Order of the Phoenix, Rane and Sirius side by side, Wade just inside the doorway with his cloak halfway off, frozen. Rane was looking at him with her brows knit, as if expecting a blow at any second; Sirius, meanwhile, was staring at Wade with a broad, manic smile on his face, his eyebrows so high they were in danger of vanishing into his hairline. There was a glisten of sweat at his hairline.

“Come again?” said Wade in a deadly quiet voice.

He was staring at Sirius in particular from beneath his brows, looking positively scary, even though it had been Rane that had spoken. She cleared her throat pointedly, feeling absurdly like a matador waving a red flag.

“I said I’m pregnant, dad,” she said.

Wade nodded, pulling his cloak the rest of the way off, his mouth turned down at the corners in a mild, dangerous expression Rane remembered well from her childhood (it usually meant her latest misconduct had been found out, and sentencing would commence shortly). Rather than hanging it on the serpent-headed rack that stood beside the door, he simply opened his hand and dropped it into a pile on the floor. A little poof of dust wheezed out of the carpet. He had still not taken his eyes from Sirius, whose crazy grin had at last begun to falter a bit.

“That’s what I _thought_ you said,” said Wade.

Rane had not meant for it to come out like this when she had summoned her father to headquarters, not at all. She had envisioned a comfortable, controlled environment in which she plied her father with wine, perhaps, loosened him up a tad, then broke the news gently while clasping Sirius’s hands in her own and beaming up at him, just a couple of crazy kids in love with a bright future stretching out before them and nary a care in all the world. And after this poignant display had concluded, Wade could take his cue to crow with delight, maybe, or wring Sirius’s hand in both of his own and croon his absurdly genial congratulations.

Instead, it had gone like this: Wade had knocked on the door, and Sirius and Rane, who had been sitting in silent, agonized anticipation on the sofa, had leapt up together, jostling one another to reach the door first, and yanked it open. Wade had walked in, and before he had time to speak a single word, Rane had simply exclaimed it, unable to contain herself a single moment longer: I’m pregnant.

Presently, Wade steepled his fingers, held them before his mouth, closed his eyes, and exhaled deeply, as if steadying himself. Rane found this to be more alarming than anything that had come before.

“Sirius,” said Wade at last. “Come on outside, let’s talk.”

Without waiting for a response, he brushed roughly between them, striding towards the veranda doors. Rane heard him pull them open and then slam them behind him, rattling the glass distressingly. Sirius looked over at Rane, his eyes wide.

“Reckon he’s angry?” he asked in an alarmed whisper.

“No, no, no,” said Rane quickly (this sounded decidedly more reassuring than her honest opinion, which was He’s furious). “He’s - just - you better just go, Sirius -”

Sirius cast her a final, terrified look, then strode hastily to the veranda doors, where Wade could be seen standing with his back to them, staring out at the grounds with his hands on his hips. Rane watched him go uneasily, her arms folded.

Sirius shut the door behind him and stood there, his hands shoved into his pockets against the cold. Wade didn’t turn around just yet. Nearby, the hoot of an owl sounded in the growing evening sky, very loud in the silence between them.

Wade lowered his head, sighing. He ran his fingers through his long blond hair roughly, then turned at last to face Sirius, who was whey-faced.

“Sirius, you don’t understand what you’ve done,” he said in a low voice.

He didn‘t look angry, exactly . . . In fact, the expression on his face was so foreign, so utterly unlike him, that Sirius didn‘t immediately recognize it for what it actually was: fear, almost panic. His eyes were burning in his ashen face, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles in his squared face seemed pitted.

“Wade, I haven’t got any plans to just . . . Just up and _leave_ her,” said Sirius haltingly. “I love her, mate, I’ve told you -”

“Well, let me just tell you, all the love in the world ain’t gonna save us from what’s about to go down,” said Wade. He sighed again, shaking his head and staring up at the sky, looking utterly exasperated. “God dammit, I just can’t believe this . . .”

Sirius looked at him in bewilderment. “What are you talking about? Look, we’ll be alright, we just -”

“Has it occurred to you what she is?” said Wade, his voice rising slightly. “What Rane _is,_ what she actually _is?_ Didn’t Iliwynn tell you in Ylle Thalas?”

Sirius was beginning to feel mildly unsettled. This was not the response he had expected, not in any scenario.

“A half-Elf, you mean?”

“Sirius -” Wade reached out and gripped Sirius’s shoulders suddenly, looking into his eyes. “She’s not just a half-Elf, she’s the only half-Elf. Ever.”

“Wade-”

“But it’s more than that,” said Wade, shaking him gently. “It’s _more._ You hear me?”

“Wade - I don’t - I don’t understand what -” Sirius shook his head, feeling the beginnings of impatience. “Sir, all due respect, but what’s the problem? What if she is a half-Elf, or a half-anything?”

Wade released Sirius, took a step back, folded his arms over his chest. He looked frankly at Sirius for a few moments, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed in a very Rane-like way, as if deciding what to say.

“You know, I was in y’all’s situation one time too,” he said. “I was younger - not young like humans are, but young enough to be a goddam idiot - and I thought I was in love with someone. Someone from a different race. A different species. And I gave up everything to be with her, _everything._ You wanna know how that panned out for me?”

Sirius had never heard Wade speak of these things before. He stood in silent bewilderment, listening.

“Not so hot, man,” Wade answered himself. “I was exiled from my people, and I know you of all folks ought to know how hard on someone that can be, when the whole world decides you aren’t worth the shit under their shoe. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t easy, is it?”

Sirius shook his head. “No. Not easy, mate.”

“But I went through with it,” Wade went on, his voice rough. “I went through with it because I knew, I _knew_ I was doing the right thing, I was so _sure._ And it turned out that woman wasn’t worth a _good_ goddam, and she treated me like a piece of shit, and she treats her own _daughter_ like a piece of shit to this very day, although I bet you won’t ever hear Rane admit that unless she’s good and drunk. That one stupid decision, it defined me. For decades. And then Rane was born, and _oo-wee!"_

He slapped his knee exaggeratedly.

“You think the Elves were pissed off about Lori, you should have seen how they reacted to Rane!” he said, shaking his head. “Because that was a prophecy from aeons ago, from before Men even walked this earth, before even Iliwynn was around, and you can bet your ass that they didn’t like it that a lowborn warrior and a goddam deceitful human woman were responsible for bringing it about!”

“That’s different,” said Sirius. He was beginning to see where this was headed, and despite the almost devout respect he had for Wade - that everyone in the Order had for him - he could feel the beginning ember-burn of indignation in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t like to hear this - this scarlet woman being compared to Rane, whether it was her mother or not. “I’m not a lowborn, I’m a pureblood wizard, not that it means anything, and Rane isn’t a - a _cheating_ \- anything -!”

“You’re missing my point,” said Wade loudly. “Rane’s a good girl, don’t get me wrong. A damn good woman and a fighter. And you’re a good man, as far as I can tell, though I wasn’t crazy about your family -”

“Makes two of us -”

“But you’re still mixing two species,” said Wade. “You’re tampering with things, with laws of nature, that ought not be tampered with, and you don’t, you _can’t_ understand what that could mean for you. For the kid, for Rane, for the goddam entire world.”

“What _does_ it mean, then?” said Sirius. “Tell me, Wade, because I guess I’m too stupid to -”

“Well, you damn sure might be, you’re right, because you went and knocked up my daughter and put all of us in a pretty fucked up situation,” said Wade stridently.

Sirius stared at him hard, the breeze teasing the ends of his long hair, fiercely withstanding the urge to give way to his temper, which was as usual bubbling just beneath the surface, ready to brim over at the slightest urging. The man that stood before him was dangerous, and in more ways than one.

Wade took a deep breath, covered his face with his hands for a brief second, and then continued.

“Rane wasn’t supposed to be born at all,” he said slowly. “Elves and humans, they don’t get together very often but when they do they don’t make kids. Same way an elephant and a tree frog can’t make kids. Get it?”

Sirius stared at him, mystified.

Wade sighed. “Look, you know what happens when you cross a horse and a donkey, don’t you?”

Sirius shrugged. “You get a mule.”

“That’s right, you get a mule,” said Wade. “A mule is like the best parts of both its parents. Strong like a horse, tough like a donkey, whatever you like. Little bit better than the sum of its parts, nothing major. Alright?”

Sirius nodded.

“Rane is like if you took a horse and a donkey and mixed them, but instead you got a unicorn,” said Wade carefully. “And that unicorn doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing here, and neither do its parents, and no one knows what it can do. Except it can do something. All we have to go on is a prophecy that was written years ago beyond count -”

“A prophecy?”

“Yes. It says that the child of a mortal and immortal is one of the _Ainur_ reborn, and that -”

“Mate, I don’t know what any of this means!” said Sirius in frustration, throwing up his hands. “What the bloody fuck is -?”

 _“Ainur_ are the primordial spirits that created the world,” said a voice behind them. Both Sirius and Wade spun around. Rane stood there, shutting the door gently behind her, her arms wrapped around her in the chill.

“I asked you to come here so we could tell you I was pregnant, not so you could lecture Sirius about freaking Elven lore for forty-five minutes,” she went on chidingly, looking at Wade.

“Well, given recent developments, I think it’s best that he knows some of this stuff,” Wade replied defensively.

“What do these - these _Ainur_ have to do with this? What does this _prophecy_ have to do with it?” Sirius asked.

“When the _Ainur_ is reborn in the form of a _Peredhil,_ it heralds the last war, _Dagor Dagorath_ , which is supposed to mean the end of the world, I think,” Rane rattled off, with the air of someone who’s done this _ad nauseum_ in the past. “They were kindled with the flame of the Imperishable which means they could also do whatever they wanted and no one could stop them, not even their dumbass boss -”

 _“Iluvatar,”_ said Wade scathingly, looking at her as if she’d just uttered a reprehensible swear word. “Careful there, daughter mine -”

“Hey, as my forebears are so happy to remind me, _I’m_ not an Elf,” Rane replied, placing her hand on her chest. “I can take the lord’s name in vain all I _want.”_

“The prophecy says that this half-Elf will bring about _Dagor Dagorath_ and that will be the end of all of us,” Wade finished for her, looking at Sirius, “and that’ll be that. Then the Ainur can start all over again from scratch without all the bullshit.”

“That’s _if_ you choose to believe any of this, by the way,” Rane added, lifting a finger.

Wade stared at her in outraged silence for a moment, his mouth hanging open.

“Girl, I’ve lived on this earth for sixty-five-hundred years,” he said. “Now you ought to think real, real hard about what you just said, take it from me -”

“ _Sixty-five-_ ” Sirius’s mouth had dropped open. “Did you say _sixty-five-hundred_ bloody -?”

“Well, that’s fantastic, dad, but for the rest of us who might _not_ get to live forever, we’d like to enjoy some semblance of a normal life!” Rane interrupted, staring at her father.

“You’re more than welcome to enjoy whatever you damn well please!” Wade retorted, his voice rising. “What you _can’t_ do is sit there with your thumb stuck up your ass pretending there’s not something there! You see it, I see it, hell _Dumbledore_ even saw it - you know, I didn’t even have to _tell_ him about that damn prophecy, he already knew! He knew before he recruited you into the Order! Now what does that tell you?”

“That Dumbledore did his homework,” said Rane softly, shrugging and looking at the ground.

“You can’t ignore this,” said Wade, shaking his head. “You can’t . . . Rane, you _can’t_ just go through life pretending it doesn’t exist. I get it, I really do - getting a job at the Ministry, becoming an Auror, buying that goddam apartment and staying away from everyone . . . I see what you’re doing here. I‘m not stupid. I know you want to be a normal girl and do normal stuff. That‘s why I let you learn magic. But it doesn‘t change what you _are.”_

Rane didn’t look at him. She folded her arms, continuing to look at the ground.

“It’s . . . it’s _something,_ what you can do,” Wade told her. “It’s big, and it’s gonna get bigger. And more dangerous. And man, I wish I could tell you what to do with it, as your father, but baby, I can’t. I really _can’t._ All I can tell you is that you _absolutely - have_ \- to _acknowledge_ it. Take cautionary steps with it. And this? This, with Sirius?”

He gestured with one hand vaguely in Sirius’s directions.

“I get it, I realize that you love him, and he loves you, but it _changes_ in our situation! It _changes_ when you’re an _Elf,_ Rane! Because one day, Sirius is gonna be an old man, but you’ll still be just the same way, you’ll have all those years in front of you, and _Sirius_ -!”

“That’s - dad, that’s not for sure, no one knows -”

“And now a _kid?”_ Wade went on over her.

Rane said nothing for a long moment. Sirius looked between them, still quite bewildered; Wade, who was staring hard at his daughter, his brows knitted, and Rane, who was returning his gaze steadily. Her expression had cooled considerably into something almost like a glare.

A momentary silence passed between them.

“I won’t alter the course of my life for this,” said Rane very quietly. “I won’t.”

“I don’t think you have a choice,” said Wade quietly.

“I _DO_ HAVE A CHOICE!” Rane suddenly shouted, pointing at him. “I’M NOT A SLAVE TO THIS ELF-CREED HORSESHIT -!”

“THIS IS BEYOND YOU!” Wade replied, his voice rising to a shout. “IT’S BEYOND ALL OF US! IT’S NOT GOING TO GO AWAY!”

“I WON’T - LET THIS - CONTROL - MY FUCKING - _LIFE_ -!”

And suddenly Sirius had taken an involuntary step back from her, because for a moment her eyes had flashed bright, icy blue, and the shadows beneath them had lengthened as that ethereal glow had for a moment radiated out from her.

It was gone as quickly as it had come; the light faded, if it had been there at all, and Rane‘s eyes were once again hazel. Rane blinked, as if she’d just realized she had committed some appalling gaffe in company, and took a step backwards, averting her eyes.

“You see?” said Wade, though his voice had lost its ardor. “You see there?”

A moment of thick silence fell between them. Rane turned her eyes quickly to Sirius, then returned her gaze to the ground, her face pale.

“And what‘s more,” said Wade slowly, “everyone knows that you can have a mule from a horse and a donkey, but you can’t have a baby mule.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” said Rane sharply.

“You’re trying to say you don’t know what this baby is going to be,” said Sirius, suddenly understanding. “You don’t know if it’ll be like Rane or -”

“Or something else entirely,” said Wade, nodding.

The three of them said nothing for a moment.

“Dad, at this point, what I need you to do is just - just, congratulate us, and be cool, and let me handle the rest,” said Rane, looking up at him. “Because this kid is coming now.”

Wade lifted his hands into the air, shaking his head.

“This is all hypothetical,” Rane went on. “So until we find out what actually goes down, we’re going to just . . . Just keep doing what we’re doing. I love Sirius.”

She reached out and took Sirius’s hand, squeezing it gently.

“Things are alright, right now,” she said quietly. “When they stop being alright, we can freak out some more. Until then I’m gonna enjoy this and chill out on the whole bullshit thing. ‘Kay?”

Wade sighed deeply, placed his hands on his hips, then folded his arms, shaking his head.

“I love you, girl,” he said simply at length. He spread his hands. “That’s all I can do. I said my piece.”

He and Rane eyed one another for a long moment, then he turned and walked past them. He paused sliding the door opened, turned, and stuck out his hand towards Sirius.

“Congratulations, Sirius,” he said. His voice had picked up its old, genial lilt again. Sirius reached out and shook it with both of his own.

“Thanks, mate,” he said, smiling.

Wade glanced at the two of them once more, then vanished into the house, shutting the door behind him with a soft snick.

Rane sank down into a chair and buried her hands in her face at once. Sirius sat down at her side as well, looking over at her, his brow furrowed. He reached out and touched her shoulder gently.

“We have to go to the Elves,” she said quietly, looking up at him.

“The Elves? Me? _Us?”_ Sirius gave her an alarmed look. “Blimey, what for?”

“Because dad’s right, this kid is part Elf,” said Rane, shaking her head. “They have to know. They’ll . . . They’ll know what to do.”

“What to _do?”_ Sirius’s voice suddenly became loud. “Rane, this is a load of rubbish! Why are we relying on these people for advice anyways? We _know_ what to do! We’re going to have this bloody child! And shit on whoever doesn’t like it!”

Rane snorted, shaking her head. “Sirius, they have to know. They . . . I can’t explain it. They have to.”

Sirius looked at her in utter frustration for a moment longer. The entire evening had gone not at all like he’d hoped, and now he was more confused than he’d ever been before. He had not foreseen any of what Wade had brought up - this prophecy, all this rubbish about mules and unicorns - and what had been an almost ravaging excitement had now been dulled into what was almost dread. What did this all _mean?_

“I dunno about any of this,” said Sirius in a low voice. “I just . . . I love you.”

“We’ll have to go soon,” said Rane softly, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Tomorrow. Will you come with me tomorrow? Before Harry and the rest of them get here this weekend?”

As Sirius shrugged and nodded, Wade was staring out of the window of the kitchen, a firewhiskey in one hand, listening to the dry tones of their voices with perfect clarity intermixed with the chirruping of the crickets. He had never felt older, or weaker, or less able to protect his kin.


End file.
